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THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA 
LIBRARY 


PRESENTED BY THE 
WILLIAM A. WHITAKER 
FOUNDATION 








THE GREAT GATSBY 


BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 


Novels 
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE 
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED 
THE GREAT GATSBY 


Stories 
FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS 
TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE 


And a Comedy 
THE VEGETABLE 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


THE GREAT GATSBY 


BY 
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 


Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; 
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, 
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, 
I must have you!” 
—Tuomas Parke D’INVILLIERS. 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1925 


CopyricuT, 1925, sy 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Printed in the United States of America 








Digitized by the Internet Archive : 
in 2020 with funding from 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 


https://archive.org/details/greatgatsbyOOfitz_1 


{ i 
la 


THE GREAT GATSBY 


CHAPTER I 


IN my younger and more vulnerable years my father 
gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over 
in my mind ever since. 

“Whenever you feel like criticising any one,” he 
told me, ‘‘just remember that all the people in this 
world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” 

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been 
unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I 
understood that he meant a great deal more than 
that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all 
judgments, a habit that has opened up many curi- 
ous natures to me and also made me the victim of 
not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is 
quick to detect and attach itself to this quality 
when it appears in a normal person, and so it came 
about that in college I was unjustly accused of 
being a politician, because I was privy to the secret 
griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences 
were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, 
preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by 
some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation 
was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate 


revelations of young men, or at least the terms in 
I 


2 THE GREAT GATSBY 


which they express them, are usually plagiaristic 
and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving 
judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a 
little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as 
my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly 
repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is par- 
celled out unequally at birth. 

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I 
come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct 
may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, 
but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s 
founded on. When I came back from the East last 
autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in 
uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; 
I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged 
glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the 
man who gives his name to this book, was exempt 
from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented every- 
thing for which I have an unaffected scorn. If per- 
sonality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, 
then there was something gorgeous about him, some 
heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if 
he were related to one of those intricate machines 
that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. 
This responsiveness had nothing to do with that 
flabby impressionability which is dignified under the 
name of the “creative temperament’’—it was an 
extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness 
such as I have never found in any other person and 


THE GREAT GATSBY 3 


which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No— 
Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what 
preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the 
wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my 
interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded 
elations of men. 


My family have been prominent, well-to-do peo- 
ple in this Middle Western city for three generations. 
The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have 
a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes 
of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was 
my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty- 
one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started 
the wholesale hardware business that my father car- 
ries on to-day. 

I never saw this great-uncle, but ’'m supposed to 
look like him—with special reference to the rather 
hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. 
I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quar- 
ter of a century after my father, and a little later I 
participated in that delayed Teutonic migration 
known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter- 
raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. In- 
stead of being the warm centre of the world, the 
Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of 
the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the 
bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond 
business, so I supposed it could support one more 


4 THE GREAT GATSBY 


single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over 
as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and 
finally said, ‘‘Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesi- 
tant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, 
and after various delays I came East, permanently, 
I thought, in the spring of twenty-two. 

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, 
but it was a warm season, and I had just left a 
country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when 
a young man at the office suggested that we take a 
house together in a commuting town, it sounded 
like a great idea. He found the house, a weather- 
beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but 
at the last minute the firm ordered him to Wash- 
ington, and I went out to the country alone. I had 
a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he 
ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, 
who made my bed and cooked breakfast and mut- 
tered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric 
stove. 

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning 
some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped 
me on the road. 

“How do you get to West Egg village?”’ he asked 
helplessly. 

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no 
longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original set- 
tler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom 
‘of the neighborhood. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 5 


And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of 
leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in 
fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life 
was beginning over again with the summer. 

There was so much to read, for one thing, and so 
much fine health to be pulled down out of the young 
breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on 
banking and credit and investment securities, and 
they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new 
money from the mint, promising to unfold the shin- 
ing secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Me- 
cenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading 
many other books besides. I was rather literary in 
college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn 
and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now 
I was going to bring back all such things into my 
life and become again that most limited of all 
specialists, the ‘‘ well-rounded man.” This isn’t just 
an epigram—life is much more successfully looked 
at from a single window, after all. 

It was a matter of chance that I should have 
rented a house in one of the strangest communities 
in North America. It was on that slender riotous 
island which extends itself due east of New York 
—and where there are, among other natural curi- 
sities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty 
miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identi- 
cal in contour and separated only by a courtesy 
bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of 


6 THE GREAT GATSBY 


salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet 
barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not per- 
fect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they 
are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their 
physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual 
wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wing- 
less a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimi- 
larity in every particular except shape and size. 

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashion- 
able of the two, though this is a most superficial 
tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister 
contrast between them. My house was at the very 
tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and 
squeezed between two huge places that rented for 
twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my 
right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was 
a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Nor- 
mandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new 
under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swim- 
ming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and 
garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I 
didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited 
by a gentleman of that name. My own house was 
an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had 
been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a 
partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the con- 
soling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dol- 
lars a month. 

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of 


THE GREAT GATSBY 7 


fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and 
the history of the summer really begins on the eve- 
ning I drove over there to have dinner with the 
Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once 
removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just af- 
ter the war I spent two days with them in Chicago. 
Her husband, among various physical accomplish- 
ments, had been one of the most powerful ends that 
ever played football at New Haven—a national fig- 
ure In a way, one of those men who reach such an 
acute limited excellence at twenty-one that every- 
thing afterward savors of anti-climax. His family 
were enormously wealthy—even in college his free- 
dom with money was a matter for reproach—but 
now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion 
that rather took your breath away: for instance, 
he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake 
Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my 
own generation was wealthy enough to do that. 
Why they came East I don’t know. They had 
spent a year in France for no particular reason, and 
then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever 
people played polo and were rich together. This 
was a permanent move, said Daisy over the tele- 
phone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into 
Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on 
forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic 
turbulence of some irrecoverable football game. 
And so it happened that on a warm windy eve- 


8 THE GREAT GATSBY 


ning I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends 
whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even 
more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and- 
white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the 
bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward 
the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over 
sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens— 
finally when it reached the house drifting up the 
side in bright vines as though from the momentum 
of its run. The front was broken by a line of French 
windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide 
open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Bu- 
chanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs 
apart on the front porch. 

He had changed since his New Haven years. 
Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty 
with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious man- 
ner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established 
dominance over his face and gave him the appear- 
ance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not 
even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could 
hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed 
to fill those glistening boots until he strained the 
top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle 
shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin 
coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage 
—a cruel body. 

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to 
the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There 


THE GREAT GATSBY 9 


was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward 
people he liked—and there were men at New Haven 
who had hated his guts. 

“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters 
is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m 
stronger and more of a man than you are.” We 
were in the same senior society, and while we were 
never intimate I always had the impression that he 
approved of me and wanted me to like him with 
some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own. 

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch. 

“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes 
flashing about restlessly. 

Turning me around by one arm, he moved a 
broad flat hand along the front vista, including in 
its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of 
deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motor-boat 
that bumped the tide offshore. 

“Tt belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned 
me around again, politely and abruptly. “We'll go 
inside.” 

We walked through a high hallway into a bright 
rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by 
French windows at either end. The windows were 
ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass 
outside that seemed to grow a little way into the 
house. A breeze blew through the room, blew cur- 
tains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, 
twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake 


IO THE GREAT GATSBY 


of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine- 
colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does 
on the sea. 

The only completely stationary object in the 
room was an enormous couch on which two young 
women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored 
balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses 
were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been 
blown back in after a short flight around the house. 
I must have stood for a few moments listening to 
the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of 
a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as 
Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the 
caught wind died out about the room, and the cur- 
tains and the rugs and the two young women bal- 
looned slowly to the floor. 

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. 
She was extended full length at her end of the 
divan, completely motionless, and with her chin 
raised a little, as if she were balancing something on 
it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out 
of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it— 
indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an 
apology for having disturbed her by coming in. 

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise— 
she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious ex- 
pression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming 
little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward 
into the room. 


THE GREAT GATSBY It 


“Tm p-paralyzed with happiness.” 

She laughed again, as if she said something very 
witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up 
into my face, promising that there was no one in 
the world she so much wanted to see. That was a 
way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the sur- 
name of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard 
it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people 
lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made 
it no less charming.) 

_ At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nod- 
ded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly 
tipped her head back again—the object she was bal- 
ancing had obviously tottered a little and given her 
something of a fright. Again a sort of apology 
arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete 
self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me. 

I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me 
questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the 
kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as 
if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will 
never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely 
with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright 
passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in 
her voice that men who had cared for her found 
difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered 
“Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, excit- 
ing things just a while since and that there were 
gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. 


12 THE GREAT GATSBY 


I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a 
day on my way East, and how a dozen people had 
sent their love through me. 

“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically. 

“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have 
the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning 
wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along 
the north shore.” 

“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. To-mor- 
row!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to 
see the baby.” 

mlucdshkexto,« 

“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t 
you ever seen her?” 

mNever.7? 

“Well, you ought to see her. She’s——” 

Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly 
about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my 
shoulder. 

“What you doing, Nick?” 

*“‘T’m a bond man.” 

“Who with?” 

I told him. 

“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively. 

This annoyed me. 

“You will,” I answered shortly. ‘You will if you 
stay in the East.” 

“Oh, I'll stay in tne East, don’t you worry,” he 
said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if 


THE GREAT GATSBY re 


he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God 
damned fool to live anywhere else.” 

At this point Miss Baker said: ‘‘ Absolutely !” with 
such suddenness that I started—it was the first 
word she had uttered since I came into the room. 
Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for 
she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft move- 
ments stood up into the room. 

“Tm stiff,’ she complained, “I’ve been lying on 
that sofa for as long as I can remember.” 

“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been 
trying to get you to New York all afternoon.” 

' “No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cock- 
tails just in from the pantry, “Vm absolutely in 
training.” 

Her host looked at her incredulously. 

“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were 
a drop in the bottom of a glass. ‘“‘How you ever get 
anything done is beyond me.” 

I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was 
she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was 
a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect car- 
riage, which she accentuated by throwing her body 
backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. 
Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with 
polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charm- 
ing, discontented face. It occurred to me now that 
I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere 
before. 


14 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Vou live in West Egg,” she remarked contemp- 
tuously. ‘‘I know somebody there.” 

“T don’t know a single——”’ 

“You must know Gatsby.” 

“Gatsby ?” demanded Daisy. ‘‘What Gatsby?” 

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor 
dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm im- 
peratively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled 
me from the room as though he were moving a 
checker to another square. 

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on 
their hips, the two young women preceded us out 
onto a rosy-colored porch, open toward the sunset, 
where four candles flickered on the table in the 
diminished wind. 

“Why candles?”’ objected Daisy, frowning. She 
snapped them out with her fingers. ‘“‘In two weeks 
it'll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at 
us all radiantly. ‘‘Do you always watch for the 
longest day of the year and then miss it? I al- 
ways watch for the longest day in the year and then 
miss it.” 

“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss 
Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were get- 
ting into bed. 

‘All right,” said Daisy. “‘What’ll we plan?” She 
turned to me helplessly: “‘What do people plan?” 

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an 
awed expression on her little finger. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 15 


‘Look !”’ she complained; “‘I hurt it.” 

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue. 

“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know 
you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what 
I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, 
hulking physical specimen of a——”’ 

“T hate that word hulking,” objected Tom crossly, 
“even in kidding.” 

“Hulking,” insisted Daisy. 

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, 
unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence 
that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as 
their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the 
absence of all desire. They were here, and they ac- 
cepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant 
effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew 
that presently dinner would be over and a little 
later the evening too would be over and casually 
put away. It was sharply different from the West, 
where an evening was hurried from phase to phase 
toward its close, in a continually disappointed an- 
ticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the 
moment itself. 

“Vou make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,’ I con- 
fessed on my second glass of corky but rather im- 
pressive claret. “‘Can’t you talk about crops or 
something ?”’ 

I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but 
it was taken up in an unexpected way. 


16 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“‘Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom 
violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist 
about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Col- 
ored Empires’ by this man Goddard?” 

“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his 
tone. 

“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to 
read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white 
race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all sci- 
entific stuff; it’s been proved.” 

“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with 
an expression of unthoughtful sadness. ‘He reads 
deep books with long words in them. What was 
that word we——”’ 

‘Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted 
Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has 
worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are 
the dominant race, to watch out or these other 
races will have control of things.” 

“We've got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, 
winking ferociously toward the fervent sun. 

“You ought to live in California—” began Miss 
Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily 
in his chair. 

“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you 
are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesi- 
tation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she 
winked at me again. “‘—And we’ve produced all the 
things that go to make civilization—oh, science and 
art, and all that. Do you see?” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 17 


There was something pathetic in his concentra- 
tion, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, 
was not enough to him any more. When, almost 
immediately, the telephone rang inside and the but- 
ler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momen- 
tary interruption and leaned toward me. 

“T’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered en- 
thusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you 
want to hear about the butler’s nose?” 

“That’s why I came over to-night.” 

“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be 
the silver polisher for some people in New York 
that had a silver service for two hundred people. 
He had to polish it from morning till night, until 
finally it began to affect his nose——” 

‘Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss 
Baker. 

“Ves. Things went from bad to worse, until 
finally he had to give up his position.” 

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic 
affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled 
me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow 
faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, 
like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk. 

The butler came back and murmured something 
close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed 
back his chair, and without a word went inside. 
As if his absence quickened something within her, 
Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and 


singing. 


18 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“T love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind 
me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” 
She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An 
absolute rose?” 

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a 
rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring 
warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying 
to come out to you concealed in one of those breath- 
less, thrillmg words. Then suddenly she threw her 
napkin on the table and excused herself and went 
into the house. 

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance con- 
sclously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak 
when she sat up alertly and said ‘‘Sh!” in a warn- 
ing voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was 
audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned 
forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur 
trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, 
mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether. 

“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor—”’ 
I began. 

“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.” 

“Is something happening ?”’ I inquired innocently. 

“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss 
Baker, honestly surprised. “‘I thought everybody 
knew.” 

belecionst.4 

‘““Why—”’ she said hesitantly, ‘‘Tom’s got some 
woman in New York.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 19 


“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly. 

Miss Baker nodded. 

“She might have the decency not to telephone 
him at dinner time. Don’t you think?” 

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there 
was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather 
boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the 
table. 

“Tt couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense 
gayety. 

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker 
and then at me, and continued: ‘‘I looked outdoors 
for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. 
There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a 
nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star 
Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: ‘‘It’s 
romantic, isn’t it, Tom?” 

‘“‘Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to 
me: ‘If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to 
take you down to the stables.” 

The telephone rang inside, startingly, and as 
Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject 
of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. 
Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes 
at table I remember the candles being lit again, 
pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look 
squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes. I 
couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, 
but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have 


20 THE GREAT GATSBY 


mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able ut- 
terly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic ur- 
gency out of mind. To a certain temperament the 
situation might have seemed intriguing—my own 
instinct was to telephone immediately for the 
police. 

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned 
again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of 
twilight between them, strolled back into the library, 
as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, 
trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, 
I followed Daisy around a chain of connectihg ver- 
andas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we 
sat down side by side on a wicker settee. 

Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its 
lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out 
into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions 
possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be 
some sedative questions about her little girl. 

‘We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she 
said suddenly. ‘‘ Even if we are cousins. You didn’t 
come to my wedding.” 

“‘T wasn’t back from the war.” 

‘“That’s true.’ She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a 
very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about 
everything.” 

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she 
didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned 
rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 21 


“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and every- 
thing.” 

“‘Oh, yes.”’ She looked at me absently. “Listen, 
Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was 
born. Would you like to hear?” 

“Very much.” 

“Tt’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about— 
things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom 
was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether 
with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the 
nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told 
me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and 
wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And 
I hope she'll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl 
can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’ 

“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” 
she went on in a convinced way. ‘‘ Everybody thinks 
so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve 
been everywhere and seen everything and done 
everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a de- 
fiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with 
thrilling scorn. “‘Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisti- 
cated !” 

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel 
my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity 
of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though 
the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to 
exact a contributary emotion from me. I waited, 
and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with 


22 THE GREAT GATSBY 


an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had 
asserted her membership in a rather distinguished 
secret society to which she and Tom belonged. 


Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. 
Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long 
couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday 
Evening Post—the words, murmurous and unin- 
flected, running together in a soothing tune. The 
lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the 
autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the 
paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender 
muscles in her arms. 

When we came in she held us silent for a moment 
with a lifted hand. 

“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine 
on the table, “‘in our very next issue.” 

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement 
of her knee, and she stood up. 

“Ten o'clock,” she remarked, apparently finding 
the time on the ceiling. ‘Time for this good girl to 
go to bed.” 

‘“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament to- 
morrow,” explained Daisy, “‘over at Westchester.”’ 

‘“‘Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.” 

I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleas- 
ing contemptuous expression had looked out at me 
from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life 
at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I 


THE GREAT GATSBY 23 


had heard some story of her too, a critical, un- 
pleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long 
ago. 
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at 
eight, won’t you.” 

“Tf you'll get up.” 

“T will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you 
anon.” 

“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact 
T think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, 
Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You 
know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and 
push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of 
thin Se 

“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. 
“T haven’t heard a word.” 

““She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. 
“They oughtn’t to let her run around the country 
this way.” 

“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly. 

“Her family.” 

“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years 
old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t 
you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of week-ends 
out here this summer. I think the home influence 
will be very good for her.” 

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a mo- 
ment in silence. 

“Ts she from New York?” I asked quickly. 





24 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed 
together there. Our beautiful white——”’ 

“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk 
on the veranda?’’ demanded Tom suddenly. 

“Did I?” She looked at me. ‘I can’t seem to 
remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic 
race. Yes, ’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on ~ 
us and first thing you know——” 

“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he 
advised me. 

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and 
a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came 
to the door with me and stood side by side in a 
cheerful square of light. As I started my motor 
Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait! 

“T forgot to ask you something, and it’s impor- 
tant. We heard you were engaged to a girl out 
West.” 

“That’s right,’ corroborated Tom kindly. ‘‘We 
heard that you were engaged.” 

“Tt’s a libel. I’m too poor.” 

‘“‘But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me 
by opening up again in a flower-like way. ‘‘We 
heard it from three people, so it must be true.”’ 

Of course I knew what they were referring to, 
but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that 
gossip had published the banns was one of the rea- 
sons I had come East. You can’t stop going with 
an old friend on account of rumors, and on the 


THE GREAT GATSBY 25 


other hand I had no intention of being rumored 
into marriage. 

Their interest rather touched me and made them 
less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and 
a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me 
that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the 
house, child in arms—but apparently there were no 
such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact 
that he “had some woman in New York” was really 
less surprising than that he had been depressed by 
a book. Something was making him nibble at the 
edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism 
no longer nourished his peremptory heart. 

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs 
and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas- 
pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached 
my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed 
and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in 
the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, 
bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a 
persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the 
earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a 
moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and turn- 
ing my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone 
—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the 
shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing 
with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver 
pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely 
movements and the secure position of his feet upon 


26 THE GREAT GATSBY 


the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, 
come out to determine what share was his of our 
local heavens. 

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had men- 
tioned him at dinner, and that would do for an in- 
troduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a 
sudden intimation that he was content to be alone 
—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water 
in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I 
could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I 
glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except 
a single green light, minute and far away, that might 
have been the end of a dock. When I looked once 
more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone - 
again in the unquiet darkness. 


CHAPTER II 


Axsout half way between West Egg and New York 
the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs 
beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away 
from a certain desolate area of land. This is a val- 
ley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like 
wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; 
where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys 
and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent 
effort, of ash-gray men, who move dimly and already 
crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a 
line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives 
out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and imme- 
diately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden 
spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which 
screens their obscure operations from your sight. 
But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak 
dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, 
after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. 
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and 
gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They 
look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of 
enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non- 
existent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an 
oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the 
27 


28 THE GREAT GATSBY 


borough of Queens, and then sank down himself 
into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved 
away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paint- 
less days, under sun and rain, brood on over the 
solemn dumping ground. 

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a 
small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up 
to let barges through, the passengers on waiting 
trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as 
half an hour. There is always a halt there of at 
least a minute, and it was because of this that I 
first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress. | 

The fact that he had one was insisted upon 
wherever he was known. His acquaintances re- 
sented the fact that he turned up in popular cafés 
with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered 
about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though 
I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her 
—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on 
the train one afternoon, and when we stopped by 
the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and, taking hold 
of my elbow, literally forced me from the car. 

“We're getting off,’”’ he insisted. “I want you to 
meet my girl.” 

I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon, and 
his determination to have my company bordered 
on violence. The supercilious assumption was that 
on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do. 

I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad 


THE GREAT GATSBY 29 


fence, and we walked back a hundred yards along the 
road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare. The 
only building in sight was a small block of yellow 
brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of 
compact Main Street ministering to it, and contigu- 
ous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it 
contained was for rent and another was an all-night 
restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third 
was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars 
bought and sold.—and I followed Tom inside. 

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only 
car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford 
which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to 
me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and 
that sumptuous and romantic apartments were con- 
cealed overhead, when the proprietor himself ap- 
peared in the door of an office, wiping his hands 
on a piece of waste. He was a blond, spiritless man, 
anemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us 
a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue 
eyes. 

“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping 
him jovially on the shoulder. “How’s business ?’’ 

‘“T can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvinc- 
ingly. “‘When are you going to sell me that car?” 

“Next week; I’ve got my man working on it 
now.” 

“Works pretty slow, don’t he?” 

“No, he doesn’t,”’ said Tom coldly. ‘And if you 


30 THE GREAT GATSBY 


feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it some- 
where else after all.” 

“T don’t mean that,”’ explained Wilson quickly. 
““T just meant——” 

His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently 
around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a 
stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a 
woman blocked out the light from the office door. 
She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but 
she carried her flesh sensuously as some women can. 
Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crépe- 
de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, 
but there was an immediately perceptible vitality 
about her as if the nerves of her body were continu- 
ally smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking 
through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook 
hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. 
Then she wet her lips, and without turning around 
spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: 

‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody 
can sit down.” 

“Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly, and went 
toward the little office, mingling immediately with 
the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust 
veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled 
everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who 
moved close to Tom. 

“T want to see you,” said Tom intently. “‘Get on 
the next train.” : 


THE GREAT GATSBY 31 


‘All right.” 

“Till meet you by the news-stand on the lower 
level.’ | 

She nodded and moved away from him just as 
George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his 
office door. 

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. 
It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a 
gray, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in 
a row along the railroad track. 

“Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Tom, exchanging 
a frown with Doctor Eckleburg. 

** Awful.” 

“Tt does her good to get away.” 

‘“Doesn’t her husband object?” 

“Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in 
New York. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s 
alive.” 

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up to- 
gether to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs. 
Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred 
that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers 
who might be on the train. 

She had changed her dress to a brown figured 
muslin, which stretched tight over her rather wide 
hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New 
York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of Town 
Tattle and a moving-picture magazine, and in the 
station drug-store some cold cream and a small 


32 THE GREAT GATSBY 


flask of perfume. Up-stairs, in the solemn echoing 
drive she let four taxicabs drive away before she 
selected a new one, lavender-colored with gray up- 
holstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of 
the station into the glowing sunshine. But im- 
mediately she turned sharply from the window and, 
leaning forward, tapped on the front glass. 

“T want to get one of those dogs,” she said ear- 
nestly. “I want to get one forthe apartment. They’re 
nice to have—a dog.” 

We backed up to a gray old man who bore an 
absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a 
basket swung from his neck cowered a dozen very 
recent puppies of an indeterminate breed. 

“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson 
eagerly, as he came to the taxi-window. 

‘All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?” 

“1d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t 
suppose you got that kind?” 

The man peered doubtfully into the basket, 
plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, 
by the back of the neck. 

‘“That’s no police dog,” said Tom. 

“No, it’s not exactly a police dog,” said the man 
with disappointment in his voice. “It’s more of an 
Airedale.” He passed his hand over the brown wash- 
rag of a back. “Look at that coat. Some coat. 
That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching 
cold.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY ae 


“IT think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusias- 
tically. “How much is it?” 

“That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. ‘That 
dog will cost you ten dollars.” 

The Airedale—undoubtedly there was an Airedale 
concerned in it somewhere, though its feet were 
startlingly white—changed hands and settled down 
into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather- 
proof coat with rapture. 

“Ts it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately. 

“That dog? That dog’s a boy.” 

“It’s a bitch,” said Tom decisively. “‘Here’s your 
money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.” 

We drove over to Fifth Avenue, warm and soft, 
almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon. 
I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock 
of white sheep turn the corner. 

“Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you 
Beles 

“No, you don’t,” interposed Tom quickly. 
“Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the 
apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?” 

‘‘Come on,” she urged. “‘T’ll telephone my sister 
Catherine. She’s said to be very beautiful by peo- 
ple who ought to know.” 

“Well, I’d like to, but——” 

We went on, cutting back again over the Park 
toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the 
cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of 


34 THE GREAT GATSBY 


apartment-houses. Throwing a regal homecoming 
glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gath- 
ered up her dog and her other eae and went 
haughtily in. 

“T’m going to have the McKees come up,” she 
announced as we rose in the elevator. “And, of 
course, I got to call up my sister, too.” 

The apartment was on the top floor—a small 
living-room, a small dining-room, a small bedroom, 
and a bath. The living-room was crowded to the 
doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too 
large for it, so that to move about was to stumble 
continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the 
gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an 
over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting 
on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance, how- 
ever, the hen resolved itself into a bonnet, and the 
countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into 
the room. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on 
the table together with a copy of “Simon Called 
Peter,” and some of the small scandal magazines of 
Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with 
the dog. A reluctant elevator-boy went for a box 
full of straw and some milk, to which he added on 
his own initiative a tin of large, hard dog-biscuits— 
one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer 
of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out 
a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door. 

I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the 


THE GREAT GATSBY 35 


second time was that afternoon; so everything that 
happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although 
until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of 
cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson 
called up several people on the telephone; then there 
were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some at 
the drugstore on the corner. When I came back 
they had both disappeared, so I sat down discreetly 
in the living-room and read a chapter of ‘‘Simon 
Called Peter’’—either it was terrible stuff or the 
whiskey distorted things, because it didn’t make 
any sense to me. 

Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. 
Wilson and I called each other by our first names) 
reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the 
apartment-door. 

The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl 
of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, 
and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eye- 
brows had been plucked and then drawn on again 
at a more rakish angle, but the efforts of nature 
toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a 
blurred air to her face. When she moved about 
there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pot- 
tery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. 
She came in with such a proprietary haste, and 
looked around so possessively at the furniture that 
I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her 
she laughed immoderately, repeated my question 


36 THE GREAT GATSBY 


aloud, and told me she lived with a girl friend at a 
hotel. 

Mr. McKee was a pale, feminine man from the 
flat below. He had just shaved, for there was a 
white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he was 
most respectful in his greeting to every one in the 
room. He informed me that he was in the ‘“‘artistic 
game,” and I gathered later that he was a photog- 
rapher and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. 
Wilson’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm 
on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome, 
and horrible. She told me with pride that her hus- 
band had photographed her a hundred and twenty- 
seven times since they had been married. 

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time 
before, and was now attired in an elaborate after- 
noon dress of cream-colored chiffon, which gave out 
a continual rustle as she swept about the room. 
With the influence of the dress her personality had 
also undergone a change. The intense vitality that 
had been so remarkable in the garage was converted 
into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, 
her assertions became more violently affected mo- 
ment by moment, and as she expanded the room 
grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be 
revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the 
smoky air. | 

‘““My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing 
shout, “most of these fellas will cheat you every 


THE GREAT GATSBY 37 


time. All they think of is money. I had a woman 
up here last week to look at my feet, and when she 
gave me the bill you’d of thought she had my 
appendicitus out.” 

“What was the name of the woman?” asked Mrs. 
McKee. 

‘Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at 
people’s feet in their own homes.” 

“T like your dress,’’ remarked Mrs. McKee, ‘I 
think it’s adorable.” 

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising 
her eyebrow in disdain. 

“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “‘I just slip 
it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look 
like.” 

“But it looks wonderful on you, if you know 
what I mean,” pursued Mrs. McKee. “If Chester 
could only get you in that pose I think he could 
make something of it.” 

We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson, who re- 
moved a strand of hair from over her eyes and 
looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee 
regarded her intently with his head on one side, 
and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in 
front of his face. 

“T should change the light,” he said after a mo- 
ment. ‘‘I’d like to bring out the modelling of the 
features. And I’d try to get hold of all the back 
hair.”’ 


38 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“T wouldn’t think of changing the light,” cried 
Mrs. McKee. “T think it’s f 

Her husband said “Sh!” and we all looked at the 
subject again, whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned 
audibly and got to his feet. 

‘““You McKees have something to drink,” he said. 
‘““Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, 
before everybody goes to sleep.” 

“T told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised 
her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the 
lower orders. ‘These people! You have to keep 
after them all the time.” 

She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then 
she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, 
and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen 
chefs awaited her orders there. 

“‘T’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,” 
asserted Mr. McKee. 

Tom looked at him blankly. 

‘Two of them we have framed down-stairs.”’ 

“Two what?” demanded Tom. 

“Two studies. One of them I call ‘Montauk 
Point—The Gulls,’ and the other I call ‘Montauk 
Romi The sea a4 

The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the 
couch. 

“Do you live down on Long Island, too,” she in- 
quired. 

““T live at West Egg.” 





THE GREAT GATSBY 390 


“Really? I was down there at a party about a 
month ago. At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you 
know him?” 

‘‘T live next door to him.” 

“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of 
Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s where all his money comes 
from.” 

“Really ?”’ 

She nodded. 

“Vm scared of him. I’d hate to have him get 
anything on me.” 

This absorbing information about my neighbor 
was interrupted by Mrs. McKee’s pointing suddenly 
at Catherine: 

“Chester, I think you could do something with 
her,’ she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nod- 
ded in a bored way, and turned his attention to 
Tom. 

“T’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I 
could get the entry. All I ask is that they should 
give me a start.” 

‘““Ask Myrtle,” said Tom, breaking into a short 
shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a 
tray. “She'll give you a letter of introduction, won’t 
you, Myrtle?” 

“Do what?” she asked, startled. 

“You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to 
your husband, so he can do some studies of him.” 
His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. 


40 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,’ or 
something like that.” 

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in 
my ear: 

“Neither of them can stand the person they’re 
married to.” 

i Cant they pr’ 

“Can’t stand them.” She looked at Myrtle and 
then at Tom. “‘What I say is, why go on living 
with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them 
I’d get a divorce and get married to each other 
right away.” 

““Doesn’t she like Wilson either?” 

The answer to this was unexpected. It came from 
Myrtle, who had overheard the question, and it was 
violent and obscene. 

“You see,” cried Catherine triumphantly. She 
lowered her voice again. ‘‘It’s really his wife that’s 
keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they 
don’t believe in divorce.”’ 

Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little 
shocked at the elaborateness of the lie. 

“When they do get: married,’ continued Cath- 
erine, “they’re going West to live for a while until 
it blows over.” 

“Tt’d be more discreet to go to Europe.” 

“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed sur- 
-prisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo.” 
“Really.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY AI 


“Just last year. I went over there with another 
girl.” 

Potay long r”’ 

‘““No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. 
We went by way of Marseilles. We had over twelve 
hundred dollars when we started, but we got gyped 
out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We 
had an awful time getting back, I can tell you. 
God, how I hated that town!” 

The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window 
for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediter- 
ranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called 
me back into the room. 

““T almost made a mistake, too,” she declared 
vigorously. ‘I almost married a little kyke who’d 
been after me for years. I knew he was below me. 
Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s 
*way below you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d 
of got me sure.”’ 

“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her 
head up and down, ‘‘at least you didn’t marry him.” 

“T know I didn’t.” 

“Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. 
*““And that’s the difference between your case and 
mite”? 

“Why did you, Myrtle?’’ demanded Catherine. 
“Nobody forced you to.” 

Myrtle considered. 

‘I married him because I thought he was a gen- 


42 THE GREAT GATSBY 


tleman,”’ she said finally. “I thought he knew 
something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick 
my shoe.” 

“You were crazy about him for a while,” said 
Catherine. } 

“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. 
“Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any 
more crazy about him than I was about that man 
there.”’ | 

She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked 
at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression 
that I expected no affection. 

“The only crazy I was was when I married him. 
I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed 
somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never 
even told me about it, and the man came after it one 
day when he was out: ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I 
said. ‘This is the first I ever heard about it.’ But I 
gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to 
beat the band all afternoon.”’ 

“She really ought to get away from him,” re- 
sumed Catherine to me. “‘They’ve been living over 
that garage for eleven years. And Tom’s the first 
sweetie she ever had.” 

The bottle of whiskey—a second one—was now 
in constant demand by all present, excepting Cath- 
erine, who “felt just as good on nothing at all.” 
Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some 
celebrated sandwiches, which were a complete supper 


THE GREAT GATSBY 43 


in themselves. I wanted to get out and walk east- 
ward toward the park through the soft twilight, but 
each time I tried to go I became entangled in some 
wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if 
with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city 
our line of yellow windows must have contributed 
their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher 
in the darkening streets, and I saw him too, look- 
ing up and wondering. I was within and without, 
simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inex- 
haustible variety of life. 

Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and sud- 
denly her warm breath poured over me the story 
of her first meeting with Tom. 

“It was on the two little seats facing each other 
that are always the last ones left on the train. I 
was going up to New York to see my sister and 
spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent 
leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, 
but every time he looked at me I had to pretend 
to be looking at the advertisement over his head. 
When we came into the station he was next to me, 
and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, 
and so I told him I’d have to call a policeman, but 
he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got 
into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t 
getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking 
about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; 
you can’t live forever.’”’ 


44 THE GREAT GATSBY 


She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang 
full of her artificial laughter. 

“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you 
this dress as soon as I’m through with it. I’ve got 
to get another one to-morrow. I’m going to make 
a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage 
and a wave, and a collar for the dog, and one of 
those cute little ash-trays where you touch a spring, 
and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s 
grave that'll last all summer. I got to write down 
a list so I won’t forget all the things I got to do.” 

It was nine o’clock—almost immediately after- 
ward I looked at my watch and found it was ten. 
Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists 
clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of 
action. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from 
his cheek the spot of dried lather that had worried 
me all the afternoon. 

The little dog was sitting on the table looking 
with blind eyes through the smoke, and from time 
to time groaning faintly. People disappeared, re- 
appeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then 
lost each other, searched for each other, found each 
other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight 
Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face 
discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. 
Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name. 

“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. 
“Tl say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai a 





THE GREAT GATSBY 45 


Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan 
broke her nose with his open hand. 

Then there were bloody towels upon the bath- 
room floor, and women’s voices scolding, and high 
over the confusion a long broken wail of pain. 
Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a 
daze toward the door. When he had gone half way 
he turned around and stared at the scene—his wife 
and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stum- 
bled here and there among the crowded furniture 
with articles of aid, and the despairing figure on the 
couch, bleeding fluently, and trying to spread a copy 
of Town Tattle over the tapestry scenes of Versailles. 
Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the 
door. Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed. 

‘““Come to lunch some day,” he suggested, as we 
groaned down in the elevator. 

“Where?” 

“ Anywhere.” 

“Keep your hands off the lever,”’ snapped the ele- 
vator boy. 

“T beg your pardon,” said Mr. McKee with dig- 
nity, ‘I didn’t know I was touching it.” 

“All right,” I agreed, “TU be glad to.” 

... 1 was standing beside his bed and he was sit- 
ting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, 
with a great portfolio in his hands. 

“Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old 
Grocery Horse .. . Brook’n Bridge. . .” 


46 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower 
level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the 
morning Tribune, and waiting for the four o’clock 
train. 


CHAPTER III 


THERE was music from my neighbor’s house through 
the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and 
girls came and went like moths among the whisper- 
ings and the champagne and the stars. At high 
tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving 
from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the 
hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit 
the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over 
cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce 
became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from 
the city between nine in the morning and long past 
midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a 
brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mon- 
days eight servants, including an extra gardener, 
toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and 
hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages 
of the night before. 

Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons 
arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Mon- 
day these same oranges and lemons left his back 
door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a 
machine in the kitchen which could extract the 
juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a 
little button was pressed two hundred times by a 
butler’s thumb. 

47 


48 THE GREAT GATSBY 


At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came 
down with several hundred feet of canvas and 
enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of 
Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, gar- 
nished with glistening hors-d’ceuvre, spiced baked 
hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs 
and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark 
gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail 
was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and 
with cordials so long forgotten that most of his 
female guests were too young to know one from 
another. 

By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no 
thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and 
trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets 
and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last 
swimmers have come in from the beach now and 
are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are 
parked five deep in the drive, and already the 
halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with 
primary colors, and hair bobbed in strange new 
ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. 
The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of 
cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the 
air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual 
innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, 
and enthusiastic meetings between women who 
never knew each other’s names. 

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches 


THE GREAT GATSBY 49 


away from the sun, and now the orchestra is play- 
ing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices 
pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by 
minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a 
cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, 
swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the 
same breath; already there are wanderers, confident 
girls who weave here and there among the stouter 
and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous mo- 
ment the centre of a group, and then, excited with 
triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces 
and voices and color under the constantly changing 
light. 

Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, 
seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for 
courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances 
out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary 
hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm oblig- 
ingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the 
erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s 
understudy from the Follies. The party has begun. 

I believe that on the first night I went to Gats- 
by’s house I was one of the few guests who had 
actually been invited. People were not invited— 
they went there. They got into automobiles which 
bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they 
ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there they were 
introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and 
after that they conducted themselves according to 


50 THE GREAT GATSBY 


the rules of behavior associated with an amusement 
park. Sometimes they came and went without hav- 
ing met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a 
simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of ad- 
mission. 

I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a 
uniform of robin’s-egg blue crossed my lawn early 
that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal 
note from his employer: the honor would be entirely 
Gatsby’s, it said, if I would attend his “‘little party”’ 
that night. He had seen me several times, and had 
intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar 
combination of circumstances had prevented it— 
signed Jay Gatsby, in a majestic hand. 

Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his 
lawn a little after seven, and wandered around 
rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people 
I didn’t know—though here and there was a face 
I had noticed on the commuting train. I was im- 
mediately struck by the number of young English- 
men dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a 
little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices 
to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that 
they were selling something: bonds or insurance or 
automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware 
of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced 
that it was theirs for a few words in the right 
key. 

As soon as [ arrived I made an attempt to find 


THE GREAT GATSBY 51 


my host, but the two or three people of whom I 
asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an 
amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowl- 
edge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direc- 
tion of the cocktail table—the only place in the 
garden where a single man could linger without 
looking purposeless and alone. 

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer 
embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the 
house and stood at the head of the marble steps, 
leaning a little backward and looking with contemp- 
tuous interest down into the garden. 

Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach 
myself to some one before I should begin to address 
cordial remarks to the passers-by. 

“Hello!” I roared, advancing toward her. My 
voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden. 

“T thought you might be here,” she responded 
absently as I came up. ‘‘I remembered you lived 
next door to——”’ 

She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that 
she’d take care of me in a minute, and gave ear to 
two girls in twin yellow dresses, who stopped at 
the foot of the steps. 

“Hello!” they cried together. “Sorry you didn’t 
win.” 

That was for the golf tournament. She had lost 
in the finals the week before. 

“You don’t know who we are,” said one of the 


52 THE GREAT GATSBY 


girls in yellow, ‘‘but we met you here about a 
month ago.”’ 

“You’ve dyed your hair since then,” remarked 
Jordan, and I started, but the girls had moved 
casually on and her remark was addressed to the pre- 
mature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out 
of a caterer’s basket. With Jordan’s slender golden 
arm resting in mine, we descended the steps and 
sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails 
floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down 
at a table with the two girls in yellow and three 
men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble. 

“Do you come to these parties often?” inquired 
Jordan of the girl beside her. 

“The last one was the one I met you at,” an- 
swered the girl, in an alert confident voice. She 
turned to her companion: ‘Wasn’t it for you, 
Lucille?” 

It was for Lucille, too. 

“‘T like to come,”’ Lucille said. ‘‘I never care what 
I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here 
last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked me 
my name and address—inside of a week I got a 
package from Croirier’s with a new evening gown 
ies 

“Did you keep it?” asked Jordan. 

“Sure I did. I was going to wear it to-night, but 
it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. 
It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred 
and sixty-five dollars.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 53 


‘“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll 
do a thing like that,” said the other girl eagerly. 
“He doesn’t want any trouble with anybody.” 

“Who doesn’t?” I inquired. 

“Gatsby. Somebody told me——” 

The two girls and Jordan leaned together con- 
fidentially. 

“Somebody told me they thought he killed a 
man once.” 

A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. 
Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly. 

“T don’t think it’s so much ¢hat,” argued Lucille 
sceptically; “it’s more that he was a German spy 
during the war.” 

One of the men nodded in confirmation. 

“T heard that from a man who knew all about 
him, grew up with him in Germany,” he assured us 
positively. 

“Oh, no,” said the first girl, “it couldn’t be that, 
because he was in the American army during the 
war.” As our credulity switched back to her she 
leaned forward with enthusiasm. ‘‘ You look at him 
sometimes when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. 
V’ll bet he killed a man.” 

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shiv- 
ered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. 
It was testimony to the romantic speculation he in-, 
spired that there were whispers about him from 
those who had found little that it was necessary to 
whisper about in this world. 


54 THE GREAT GATSBY 


The first supper—there would be another one 
after midnight—was now being served, and Jordan 
invited me to join her own party, who were spread 
around a table on the other side of the garden. 
There were three married couples and Jordan’s es- 
cort, a persistent undergraduate given to violent 
innuendo, and obviously under the impression that 
sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up 
her person to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of 
rambling this party had preserved a dignified homo- 
geneity, and assumed to itself the function of rep- 
resenting the staid nobility of the country-side— 
East Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully 
on guard against its spectroscopic gayety. 

“Let’s get out,’ whispered Jordan, after a some- 
how wasteful and inappropriate half-hour; “this is 
much too polite for me.” 

We got up, and she explained that we were going 
to find the host: I had never met him, she said, and 
it was making me uneasy. The undergraduate 
nodded in a cynical, melancholy way. 

The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded, 
but Gatsby was not there. She couldn’t find him 
from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the 
veranda. On a chance we tried an important-look- 
ing door, and walked into a high Gothic library, 
panelled with carved English oak, and probably 
transported complete from some ruin overseas. 

A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl- 


THE GREAT GATSBY 55 


eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on 
the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady con- 
centration at the shelves of books. As we entered 
he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan 
from head to foot. 

“What do you think?” he demanded impetu- 
ously. 

** About what?” 

He waved his hand toward the book-shelves. 

“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t 
bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.” 

“The books?” 

He nodded. . 

“Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I 
thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter 
of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and— Here! 
Lemme show you.” 

Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to 
the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the 
“Stoddard Lectures.” 

“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide 
piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s 
a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thorough- 
ness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too— 
didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? 
What do you expect?” 

He snatched the book from me and replaced it 
hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was 
removed the whole library was liable to collapse. 


56 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Who brought you?” he demanded. ‘‘Or did you 
just come? I was brought. Most people were 
brought.” 

Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully, without 
answering. 

“T was brought by a woman named Roosevelt,” 
he continued. “Mrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you 
know her? I met her somewhere last night. I’ve 
been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it 
might sober me up to sit in a library.” 

“Has it?” 

‘A little bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only 
been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? 
They’re real. They’re———” 

“You told us.” 

We shook hands with him gravely and went back 
outdoors. 

There was dancing now on the canvas in the gar- 
den; old men pushing young girls backward in 
eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding 
each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in 
the corners—and a great number of single girls danc- 
ing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for 
a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. 
By midnight the hilarity had increased. A cele- 
brated tenor had sung in Italian, and a notorious 
contralto had sung in jazz, and between the num- 
bers people were doing “‘stunts”’ all over the garden, 
while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward 


THE GREAT GATSBY 57 


the summer sky. A pair of stage twins, who turned 
out to be the girls in yellow, did a baby act in cos- 
tume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger 
than finger-bowls. ‘The moon had risen higher, and 
floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, 
trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the 
banjoes on the lawn. 

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at 
a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy 
little girl, who gave way upon the slightest provo- 
cation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying 
myself now. I had taken two finger-bowls of cham- 
pagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes 
into something significant, elemental, and profound. 

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at 
me and smiled. 

“Your face is familiar,” he said, politely. ‘‘Weren’t 
you in the First Division during the war?” 

“Why, yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infan- 
try.” 

“TI was in the Sixteenth until June nineteen- 
eighteen. I knew I’d seen you somewhere before.” 

We talked for a moment about some wet, gray 
little villages in France. Evidently he lived in this 
vicinity, for he told me that he had just bought a 
hydroplane, and was going to try it out in the 
morning. 

“Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the 
shore along the Sound.” 


58 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“What time?” 

“Any time that suits you best.” 

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name 
when Jordan looked around and smiled. 

“Having a gay time now?” she inquired. 

“Much better.” I turned again to my new ac- 
quaintance. “This is an unusual party for me. I 
haven’t even seen the host. I live over there—”’ 
I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the dis- 
tance, ‘‘and this man Gatsby sent over his chauf- 
feur with an invitation.” 

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to 
understand. 

“Ym Gatsby,” he said suddenly. 

“What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.” 

“T thought you knew, old sport. I’m afraid ’m 
not a very good host.” 

He smiled understandingly—much more than un- 
derstandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with 
a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may 
come across four or five times in life. It faced—or 
seemed to face—the whole eternal world for an in- 
stant, and then concentrated on you with an irresis- 
tible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just 
so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in 
you as you would like to believe in yourself, and as- 
sured you that it had precisely the impression of you 
that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely 
at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an 


THE GREAT GATSBY 59 


elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, 
whose elaborate formality of speech just missed 
being absurd. Some time before he introduced him- 
self I’d got a strong impression that he was picking 
his words with care. 

Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified 
himself a butler hurried toward him with the infor- 
mation that Chicago was calling him on the wire. 
He excused himself with a small bow that included 
each of us in turn. 

“Tf you want anything just ask for it, old sport,” 
he urged me. ‘‘Excuse me. I will rejoin you later.” 

When he was gone I turned immediately to Jor- 
dan—constrained to assure her of my surprise. I 
had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and 
corpulent person in his middle years. 

“Who is he?” I demanded. “‘Do you know?” 

“He’s just a man named Gatsby.” 

“Where is he from, I mean? And what does he 
gor’? 

“Now you're started on the subject,’ she an- 
swered with a wan smile. ‘‘Well, he told me once 
he was an Oxford man.” 

A dim background started to take shape behind 
him, but at her next remark it faded away. 

‘However, I don’t believe it.” 

“Why not?” 

“T don’t know,” she insisted, ‘‘I just don’t think 
he went there.” 


60 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Something in her tone reminded me of the other 
girl’s “TI think he killed a man,” and had the effect 
of stimulating my curiosity. I would have accepted 
without question the information that Gatsby sprang 
from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower 
East Side of New York. That was comprehensible. 
But young men didn’t—at least in my provincial 
inexperience I believed they didn’t—drift coolly out 
of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound. 

‘Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, 
changing the subject with an urban distaste for the 
concrete. ‘“‘And I like large parties. They’re so in- 
timate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” 

There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice 
of the orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the 
chatter of the garden. 

“‘Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried. “‘At the re- 
quest of Mr. Gatsby we are going to play for you 
Mr. Vladmir Tostoff’s latest work, which attracted 
so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If 
you read the papers you know there was a big sen- 
sation.” He smiled with jovial condescension, and 
added: ‘‘Some sensation!’? Whereupon everybody 
laughed. 

“The piece is known,” he concluded lustily, ‘as 
‘Vladmir Tostoff’s Jazz History of the World.’ ” 

The nature of Mr. Tostoff’s composition eluded 
me, because just as it began my eyes fell on Gatsby, 
standing alone on the marble steps and looking from 


THE GREAT GATSBY 61 


one group to another with approving eyes. His tanned 
skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his 
short hair looked as though it were trimmed every 
day. I could see nothing sinister about him. I won- 
dered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to 
set him off from his guests, for it seemed to me that 
he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity in- 
creased. When the “‘Jazz History of the World” was 
over, girls were putting their heads on men’s shoul- 
ders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were swoon- 
ing backward playfully into men’s arms, even into 
groups, knowing that some one would arrest their 
falls—but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, 
and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoulder, and 
no singing quartets were formed for Gatsby’s head 
for one link. 

“T beg your pardon.” 

Gatsby’s butler was suddenly standing beside us. 

“Miss Baker?” he inquired. “‘I beg your pardon, 
but Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to you alone.” 

“With me?” she exclaimed in surprise. 

“Yes, madame.” 

She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in 
astonishment, and followed the butler toward the 
house. I noticed that she wore her evening-dress, 
all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a 
jauntiness about her movements as if she had first 
learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp 
mornings. 


62 - THE GREAT GATSBY 


I was alone and it was almost two. For some time 
confused and intriguing sounds had issued from a 
long, many-windowed room which overhung the 
terrace. Eluding Jordan’s undergraduate, who was 
now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two 
chorus girls, and who implored me to join him, I 
went inside. } 

The large room was full of people. One of the 
girls in yellow was playing the piano, and beside 
her stood a tall, red-haired young lady from a 
famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a 
quantity of champagne, and during the course of 
her song she had decided, ineptly, that everything 
was very, very sad—she was not only singing, she 
was weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in 
the song she filled it with gasping, broken sobs, 
and then took up the lyric again in a quavering so- 
prano. The tears coursed down her cheeks—not 
freely, however, for when they came into contact 
with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed 
an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way 
in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was 
made that she sing the notes on her face, whereupon 
she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and went 
off into a deep vinous sleep. 

“She had a fight with a man who says he’s her 
husband,” explained a girl at my elbow. 

I looked around. Most of the remaining women 
were now having fights with men said to be their 


THE GREAT GATSBY 63 


husbands. Even Jordan’s party, the quartet from 
East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One 
of the men was talking with curious intensity to 
a young actress, and his wife, after attempting to 
laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent 
way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank at- 
tacks—at intervals she appeared suddenly at his 
side like an angry diamond, and hissed: ‘‘ You prom- 
ised !”’ into his ear. 

The reluctance to go home was not confined to 
wayward men. The hall was at present occupied 
by two deplorably sober men and their highly in- 
dignant wives. The wives were sympathizing with 
each other in slightly raised voices. 

“Whenever he sees I’m having a good time he 
wants to go home.” 

‘Never heard anything so selfish in my life.” 

“‘We’re always the first ones to leave.” 

“So are we.” 

“Well, we’re almost the last to-night,” said one 
of the men sheepishly. “The orchestra left half an 
hour ago.” 

In spite of the wives’ agreement that such ma- 
levolence was beyond credibility, the dispute ended 
in a short struggle, and both wives were lifted, 
kicking, into the night. 

As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the 
library opened and Jordan Baker and Gatsby came 
out together. He was saying some last word to her, 


64 THE GREAT GATSBY 


but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly 
into formality as several people approached him to 
say good-by. 

Jordan’s party were calling impatiently to her 
from the porch, but she lingered for a moment to 
shake hands. | 

“T’ve just heard the most amazing thing,” she 
whispered. ‘‘How long were we in there?”’ 

“Why, about an hour.” 

“Tt was... simply amazing,” she repeated ab- 
stractedly. ‘‘But I swore I wouldn’t tell it and here 
I am tantalizing you.” She yawned gracefully in my 


9? 


face. ‘‘Please come and see me. ... Phone book. 
... Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard. 
... My aunt....” She was hurrying off as she 


talked—her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as 
she melted into her party at the door. 

- Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I 
had stayed so late, I joined the last of Gatsby’s 
guests, who were clustered around him. I wanted 
to explain that I’d hunted for him early in the eve- 
ning and to apologize for not having known him in 
the garden. 

“Don’t mention it,” he enjoined me eagerly. 
“Don’t give it another thought, old sport.” The 
familiar expression held no more familiarity than 
the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. 
‘And don’t forget we’re going up in the hydroplane 
to-morrow morning, at nine o’clock.”’ 


THE GREAT GATSBY 65 


Then the butler, behind his shoulder: 

“Philadelphia wants you on the ’phone, sir.” 

‘All right, in a minute. Tell them I'll be right 
there. . . . Good night.” 

“Good night.” 

“Good night.”” He smiled—and suddenly there 
seemed to be a pleasant significance in having been 
among the last to go, as if he had desired it all the 
time. “Good night, old sport. . . . Good night.” 

But as I walked down the steps I saw that the 
evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the 
door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and 
tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, 
right side up, but violently shorn of one wheel, 
rested a new coupé which had left Gatsby’s drive 
not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall 
accounted for the detachment of the wheel, which 
was now getting considerable attention from half a 
dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had 
left their cars blocking the road, a harsh, discordant 
din from those in the rear had been audible for some 
time, and added to the already violent confusion of 
the scene. 

A man in a long duster had dismounted from the 
wreck and now stood in the middle of the road, look- 
ing from the car to the tire and from the tire to the 
observers in a pleasant, puzzled way. 

“See!” he explained. “It went in the ditch.” 

The fact was infinitely astonishing to him, and I 


66 THE GREAT GATSBY 


recognized first the unusual quality of wonder, and 
then the man—it was the late patron of Gatsby’s 
library. 

“How'd it happen?” 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

“T know nothing whatever about mechanics,” he 
sald decisively. 

“But how did it happen? Did you run into the 
wall?” 

“Don’t ask me,” said Owl Eyes, washing his hands 
of the whole matter. “I know very little about 
driving—next to nothing. It happened, and that’s 
all I know.” 

“Well, if you’re a poor driver you oughtn’t to 
try driving at night.” 

“But I wasn’t even trying,” he explained indig- 
nantly, ‘I wasn’t even trying.” 

An awed hush fell upon the bystanders. 

“Do you want to commit suicide?” 

““You’re lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver 
and not even frying!” 

“You don’t understand,” explained the criminal. 
“T wasn’t driving. There’s another man in the car.” 

The shock that followed this declaration found 
voice in a sustained ‘‘Ah-h-h!” as the door of the 
coupé swung slowly open. The crowd—it was now a 
crowd—stepped back involuntarily, and when the 
door had opened wide there was a ghostly pause. 
Then, very gradually, part by part, a pale, dangling 


THE GREAT GATSBY 67 


individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing ten- 
tatively at the ground with a large uncertain dancing 
shoe. 

Blinded by the glare of the headlights and con- 
fused by the incessant groaning of the horns, the 
apparition stood swaying for a moment before he 
perceived the man in the duster. 

‘““‘Wha’s matter?”’ he inquired calmly. “Did we 
run outa gas?” 

“Look !” 

Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated 
wheel—he stared at it for a moment, and then 
looked upward as though he suspected that it had 
dropped from the sky. 

“It came off,” some one explained. 

He nodded. 

‘At first I din’ notice we’d stopped.” 

A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straight- 
ening his shoulders, he remarked in a determined 
voice: 

‘““Wonder’ff tell me where there’s a gas’line sta- 
tion?” 

At least a dozen men, some of them a little better 
off than he was, explained to him that wheel and 
car were no longer joined by any physical bond. 

“Back out,” he suggested after a moment. ‘‘ Put 
her in reverse.” 

“But the wheel’s off!” 

He hesitated. 


68 THE GREAT GATSBY 


‘“‘No harm in trying,” he said. 

The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo 
and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward 
home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon 
was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night 
fine as before, and surviving the laughter and the 
sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden empti- 
ness seemed to flow now from the windows and the 
great doors, endowing with complete isolation the 
figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand 
up in a formal gesture of farewell. 


Reading over what I have written so far, I see I 
have given the impression that the events of three 
nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me. 
On the contrary, they were merely casual events 
in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they 
absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs. 

Most of the time I worked. In the early morning 
the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried 
down the white chasms of lower New York to the 
Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young 
bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched 
with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little 
pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I 
even had a short affair with a girl who lived in 
Jersey City and worked in the accounting depart- 
ment, but her brother began throwing mean looks 


THE GREAT GATSBY 69 


in my direction, so when she went on her vacation 
in July I let it blow quietly away. 

I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some 
reason it was the gloomiest event of my day—and 
then I went up-stairs to the library and studied in- 
vestments and securities for a conscientious hour. 
There were generally a few rioters around, but they 
never came into the library, so it was a good place 
to work. After that, if the night was mellow, I 
strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray 
Hill Hotel, and over 33d Street to the Pennsylvania 
Station. 

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous 
feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the con- 
stant flicker of men and women and machines gives 
to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue 
and pick out romantic women from the crowd and 
imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter 
into their lives, and no one would ever know or dis- 
approve. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them 
to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, 
and they turned and smiled back at me before they 
faded through a door into warm darkness. At the 
enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting 
loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor 
young clerks who loitered in front of windows wait- 
ing until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner 
—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poign- 
ant moments of night and life. 


70 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Again at eight o’clock, when the dark lanes of the 
Forties were lined five deep with throbbing taxi- 
cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking 
in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as 
they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter 
from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes made un- 
intelligible circles inside. Imagining that I, too, was 
hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate 
excitement, I wished them well. 

For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then 
in midsummer I found her again. At first I was 
flattered to go places with her, because she was a 
golf champion, and every one knew her name. 
Then it was something more. I wasn’t actually in 
love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored 
haughty face that she turned to the world concealed 
something—most affectations conceal something 
eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning 
—and one day I found what it was. When we were 
on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a 
borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and 
then lied about it—and suddenly I remembered the 
story about her that had eluded me that night at 
Daisy’s. At her first big golf tournament there was a 
row that nearly reached the newspapers—a sugges- 
tion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in 
the semi-final round. The thing approached the 
proportions of a scandal—then died away. A 
caddy retracted his statement, and the only other 


THE GREAT GATSBY 71 


witness admitted that he might have been mis- 
taken. The incident and the name had remained 
together in my mind. 

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd 
men, and now I saw that this was because she felt 
safer on a plane where any divergence from a code 
would be thought impossible. She was incurably 
dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a 
disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I sup- 
pose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she 
was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent 
smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the de- 
mands of her hard, jaunty body. 

It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a 
woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was 
casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that 
same house party that we had a curious conversa- 
tion about driving a car. It started because she 
passed so close to some workmen that our fender 
flicked a button on one man’s coat. 

““You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “‘ Either you 
ought to be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive 
at val.’ 

* Lam careful,’’ 

“No, you’re not.” 

‘‘Well, other people are,” she said lightly. 

““What’s that got to do with it?” 

“They'll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It 
takes two to make an accident.” 


72 THE GREAT GATSBY 


““Suppose you met somebody just as careless as 
yourself.” 

“T hope I never will,” she answered. “‘I hate care- 
less people. That’s why I like you.” 

Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, 
but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and 
for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow- 
thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes 
on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get 
myself definitely out of that tangle back home. 
I’d been writing letters once a week and signing 
them: ‘‘Love, Nick,” and all I could think of was 
how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint 
mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. 
Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that 
had to be tactfully broken off before I was free. 

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the 
cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the 
few honest people that I have ever known. 


CHAPTER IV 


On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the 
villages alongshore, the world and its mistress re- 
turned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously 
on his lawn. 

“‘He’s a bootlegger,” said the young ladies, mov- 
ing somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. 
‘““One time he killed a man who had found out that 
he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second 
cousin to the devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and 
pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass.” 

Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a time- 
table the names of those who came to Gatsby’s 
house that summer. It is an old time-table now, dis- 
integrating at its folds, and headed ‘This schedule 
in effect July 5th, 1922.’ But I can still read the 
gray names, and they will give you a better impres- 
sion than my generalities of those who accepted 
Gatsby’s hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute 
of knowing nothing whatever about him. 

From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers 
and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom 
I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was 
drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Horn- 
beams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan 
named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a cor- 

73 


74 THE GREAT GATSBY 


ner and flipped up their noses like goats at whoso- 
ever came near. And the Ismays and the Chrysties 
(or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr. Chrystie’s 
wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, 
turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no 
good reason at all. 

Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remem- 
ber. He came only once, in white knickerbockers, 
and had a fight with a bum named Etty in the 
garden. From farther out on the Island came the 
Cheadles and the O. R. P. Schraeders, and the 
Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the Fish- 
guards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three 
days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk 
out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s 
automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancies 
came, too, and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over 
sixty, and Maurice A. Flink, and the Hammerheads, 
and Beluga the tobacco importer, and Beluga’s girls. 

From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys 
and Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick 
the State senator and Newton Orchid, who con- 
trolled Films Par Excellence, and Eckhaust and 
Clyde Cohen and Don S. Schwartze (the son) and Ar- 
thur McCarty, all connected with the movies in one 
way or another. And the Catlips and the Bembergs 
and G. Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who 
afterward strangled his wife. Da Fontano the pro- 
moter came there, and Ed Legros and James B. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 75 


(“Rot-Gut”’) Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest 
Lilly—they came to gamble, and when Ferret wan- 
dered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out 
and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate 
profitably next day. 

A man named Klipspringer was there so often 
and so long that he became known as “‘the boarder”’ 
—I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical 
people there were Gus Waize and Horace O’Dona- 
van and Lester Myer and George Duckweed and 
Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes 
and the Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel 
Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellehers and the 
Dewars and the Scullys and S. W. Belcher and the 
Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and 
Henry L. Palmetto, who killed himself by jumping 
in front of a subway train in Times Square. 

Benny McClenahan arrived always with four 
girls. They were never quite the same ones in physi- 
cal person, but they were so identical one with an- 
other that it inevitably seemed they had been there 
before. I have forgotten their names—Jaqueline, I 
think, or else Consuela, or Gloria or Judy or June, 
and their last names were either the melodious 
names of flowers and months or the sterner ones 
of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if 
pressed, they would confess themselves to be. 

_ In addition to all these I can remember that 

Faustina O’Brien came there at least once and the 


76 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Baedeker girls and young Brewer, who had his nose 
shot off in the war, and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss 
Haag, his fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters and Mr. 
P. Jewett, once head of the American Legion, and 
Miss Claudia Hip, with a man reputed to be her 
chauffeur, and a prince of something, whom we 
called Duke, and whose name, if I ever knew it, I 
have forgotten. 

All these people came to Gatsby’s house in the 
summer. 


At nine o’clock, one morning late in July, Gats- 
by’s gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my 
door and gave out a burst of melody from its three- 
noted horn. It was the first time he had called on 
me, though I had gone to two of his parties, mounted 
in his hydroplane, and, at his urgent invitation, 
‘made frequent use of his beach. 

‘“‘Good morning, old sport. You’re having lunch 
with me to-day and I thought we'd ride up to- 
gether.” 

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his 
car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so 
peculiarly American—that comes, I suppose, with 
the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, 
with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic 
games. This quality was continually breaking 
through his punctilious manner in the shape of rest- 
lessness. He was never quite still; there was always 


THE GREAT GATSBY 77 


a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening 
and closing of a hand. 

He saw me looking with admiration at his car. 

“Tt’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?”? He jumped off 
to give me a better view. ‘‘Haven’t you ever seen 
it before?” 

I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich 
cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and 
there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat- 
boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and ter- 
raced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored 
a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of 
glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we 
started to town. 

I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times 
in the past month and found, to my disappointment, 
that he had little to say. So my first impression, that 
he was a person of some undefined consequence, had 
gradually faded and he had become simply the pro- 
prietor of an elaborate road-house next door. 

And then came that disconcerting ride. We 
hadn’t reached West Egg Village before Gatsby 
began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and 
slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his 
caramel-colored suit. 

“‘Look here, old sport,” he broke out surprisingly, 
‘“‘what’s your opinion of me, anyhow?” 

A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized eva- 
sions which that question deserves. 


78 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Well, I’m going to tell you something about my 
life,’ he interrupted. ‘I don’t want you to get a 
wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear.” 

So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that 
flavored conversation in his halls. 

“Tl tell you God’s truth.”’ His right hand sud- 
denly ordered divine retribution to stand by. “I 
am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle 
West—all dead now. I was brought up in America 
but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors 
have been educated there for many years. It is a 
family tradition.” 

He looked at me sideways—and I knew why Jor- 
dan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried 
the phrase ‘‘educated at Oxford,” or swallowed it, 
or choked on it, as though it had bothered him be- 
fore. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell 
to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn’t something 
a little sinister about him, after all. 

“What part of the Middle West?” I inquired 
casually. 

“San Francisco.” 

oLisea,” 

‘““My family all died and I came into a good deal 
of money.” 

His voice was solemn, as if the memory of that 
sudden extinction of a clan still haunted him. For 
a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg, 
but a glance at him convinced me otherwise. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 79 


“After that I lived like a young rajah in all the 
capitals of Europe—Paris, Venice, Rome—collect- 
ing jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, paint- 
ing a little, things for myself only, and trying to 
forget something very sad that had happened to me 
long ago.” 

With an effort I managed to restrain my incredu- 
lous laughter. The very phrases were worn so 
threadbare that they evoked no image except that 
of a turbaned “‘character” leaking sawdust at every 
pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de 
Boulogne. 

“Then came the war, old sport. It was a great 
relief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed to 
bear an enchanted life. I accepted a commission 
as first lieutenant when it began. In the Argonne 
Forest I took the remains of my machine-gun bat- 
talion so far forward that there was a half mile gap 
on either side of us where the infantry couldn’t 
advance. We stayed there two days and two nights, 
a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns, 
and when the infantry came up at last they found 
the insignia of three German divisions among the 
piles of dead. I was promoted to be a major, and 
every Allied government gave me a decoration—even 
Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adri- 
atic Sea !”’ 

Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and 
nodded at them—with his smile. The smile compre- 


80 THE GREAT GATSBY 


hended Montenegro’s troubled history and sym- 
pathized with the brave struggles of the Montene- 
grin people. It appreciated fully the chain of na- 
tional circumstances which had elicited this tribute 
from Montenegro’s warm little heart. My incredul- 
ity was submerged in fascination now; it was like 
skimming hastily through a dozen magazines. 

He reached in his pocket, and a piece of metal, 
slung on a ribbon, fell into my palm. 

‘“‘That’s the one from Montenegro.” 

To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic 
look. ‘‘Orderi di Danilo,” ran the circular legend, 
“Montenegro, Nicolas Rex.” 

elirneit.o 

“Major Jay Gatsby,” I read, “For Valour Ex- 
traordinary.” 

“‘Here’s another thing I always carry. A souvenir 
of Oxford days. It was taken in Trinity Quad—the 
man on my left is now the Earl of Doncaster.” 

It was a photograph of half a dozen young men 
in blazers loafing in an archway through which were 
visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby, looking 
a little, not much, younger—with a cricket bat in 
his hand. 

Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers 
flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw 
him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their 
crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken 
heart. 


THE GREAT GATSBY SI 


‘“‘Y’m going to make a big request of you to-day,” 
he said, pocketing his souvenirs with satisfaction, 
‘so I thought you ought to know something about 
me. I didn’t want you to think I was just some no- 
body. You see, I usually find myself among stran- 
gers because I drift here and there trying to forget 
the sad thing that happened to me.” He hesitated. 
“You'll hear about it this afternoon.” 

eeAt lunch ?” 

‘No, this afternoon. I happened to find out that 
you’re taking Miss Baker to tea.” 

“Do you mean you're in love with Miss Baker?” 

“No, old sport, I’m not. But Miss Baker has 
kindly consented to speak to you about this matter.” 

I hadn’t the faintest idea what ‘‘this matter” was, 
but I was more annoyed than interested. I hadn’t 
asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss Mr. Jay 
Gatsby. I was sure the request would be something 
utterly fantastic, and for a moment I was sorry I’d 
ever set foot upon his overpopulated lawn. 

He wouldn’t say another word. His correctness 
grew on him as we neared the city. We passed 
Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red- 
belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled 
slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the 
faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds. Then the valley of 
ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had 
a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage 
pump with panting vitality as we went by. 


82 THE GREAT GATSBY 


With fenders spread like wings we scattered light 
through half Astoria—only half, for as we twisted 
among the pillars of the elevated I heard the fa- 
miliar ‘‘jug-jug-spat!” of a motorcycle, and a fran- 
tic policeman rode alongside. 

‘All right, old sport,” called Gatsby. We slowed 
down. Taking a white card from his wallet, he 
waved it before the man’s eyes. 

“Right you are,” agreed the policeman, tipping 
his cap. “‘Know you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Ex- 
cuse me!” 

‘“‘What was that?” I inquired. ‘“‘The picture of 
Oxford ?”’ 

‘“‘T was able to do the commissioner a favor once, 
and he sends me a Christmas card every year.” 

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through 
the girders making a constant flicker upon the mov- 
Ing cars, with the city rising up across the river in 
white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish 
out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from 
the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for 
the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mys- 
tery and the beauty in the world. 

A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with 
blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, 
and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The 
friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and 
short upper lips of southeastern Europe, and I was 
glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splendid car was 


THE GREAT GATSBY 83 


included in their sombre holiday. As we crossed 
Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by 
a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, 
two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks 
of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry. 

‘Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over 
this bridge,”’ I thought; ‘anything at all... .” 

Even Gatsby could happen, without any particu- 
lar wonder. 


Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second 
Street cellar I met Gatsby for lunch. Blinking away 
the brightness of the street outside, my eyes picked 
him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to an- 
other man. 

“Mr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfs- 
hiem.”’ 

A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and 
regarded me with two fine growths of hair which 
luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I dis- 
covered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness. 

‘““__So I took one look at him,” said Mr. Wolfs- 
hiem, shaking my hand earnestly, “and what do 
you think I did?” 

“What?” I inquired politely. 

But evidently he was not addressing me, for he 
dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his ex- 
pressive nose. 

“‘T handed the money to Katspaugh and I sid: 


84 THE GREAT GATSBY 


‘All right, Katspaugh, don’t pay him a penny till 
he shuts his mouth.’ He shut it then and there.” 

Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved for- 
ward into the restaurant, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem 
swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed 
into a somnambulatory abstraction. 

‘“‘Highballs?” asked the head waiter. 

“This is a nice restaurant here,” said Mr. Wolfs- 
hiem, looking at the Presbyterian nymphs on the 
ceiling. ‘But I like across the street better !”’ 

“Ves, highballs,” agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. 
Wolfshiem: ‘It’s too hot over there.” 

“Hot and small—yes,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, “but 
full of memories.” 

“What place is that?” I asked. 

“The old Metropole.” 

“The old Metropole,’’ brooded Mr. Wolfshiem 
gloomily. ‘‘Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled 
with friends gone now forever. I can’t forget so long 
as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. 
It was six of us at the table, and Rosy had eat and 
drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morn- 
ing the waiter came up to him with a funny look 
and says somebody wants to speak to him outside. 
‘All right,’ says Rosy, and begins to get up, and I 
pulled him down in his chair. 

‘““Let the bastards come in here if they want you, 
Rosy, but don’t you, so help me, move outside this 


room.’ 


THE GREAT GATSBY 85 


“Tt was four o’clock in the morning then, and if 
we'd of raised the blinds we’d of seen daylight.” 

“Did he go?” I asked innocently. 

“Sure he went.”’ Mr. Wolfshiem’s nose flashed at 
me indignantly. ‘He turned around in the door and 
says: ‘Don’t let that waiter take away my coffee!’ 
Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot 
him three times in his full belly and drove away.” 

“‘Four of them were electrocuted,’ I said, remem- 
bering. 

“Five, with Becker.”’ His nostrils turned to me in 
an interested way. “‘I understand you’re looking for 
a business gonnegtion.”’ 

The juxtaposition of these two remarks was start- 
ling. Gatsby answered for me: 

“‘Oh, no,” he exclaimed, ‘this isn’t the man.”’ 

“No?” Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed. 

“This is just a friend. I told you we’d talk about 
that some other time.” 

“T beg your pardon,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, “IT had 
a wrong man.” 

A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, 
forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the 
old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy. 
His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around 
the room—he completed the arc by turning to in- 
spect the people directly behind. I think that, ex- 
cept for my presence, he would have taken one 
short glance beneath our own table. 


86 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Look here, old sport,’’ said Gatsby, leaning 
toward me, “I’m afraid I made you a little angry 
this morning in the car.” 

There was the smile again, but this time I held out 
against it. 

‘“T don’t like mysteries,’ I answered, ‘‘and I 
don’t understand why you won’t come out frankly 
and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to 
come through Miss Baker?” 

“Oh, it’s nothing underband,” he assured me. 
‘Miss Baker’s a great sportswoman, you know, and 
she’d never do anything that wasn’t all right.” 

Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, 
and hurried from the room, leaving me with Mr. 
Wolfshiem at the table. 

‘“‘He has to telephone,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, fol- 
lowing him with his eyes. “Fine fellow, isn’t he? 
Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman.” 

ce Veo? 

“He’s an Oggsford man.” 

ce Oh bey 

‘““He went to Oggsford College in England. You 
know Oggsford College?” 

miiverheardiGiith 

“Tt’s one of the most famous colleges in the 
world.” 

‘““Have you known Gatsby for a long time?” I 
inquired. 

‘Several years,” he answered in a gratified way. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 847 


*“‘T made the pleasure of his acquaintance just after 
the war. But I knew I had discovered a man of fine 
breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to 
myself: ‘There’s the kind of man you’d like to take 
home and introduce to your mother and sister.’ ” 
He paused. ‘‘I see you’re looking at my cuff but- 
tons.”’ 

I hadn’t been looking at them, but I did now. 
They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of 
ivory. 

“Finest specimens of human molars,” he in- 
formed me. 

“Well!” I inspected them. “That’s a very inter- 
esting idea.’ 

““Veah.” He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. 
“Yeah, Gatsby’s very careful about women. He 
would never so much as look at a friend’s wife.” 

When the subject of this instinctive trust returned 
to the table and sat down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his 
coffee with a jerk and got to his feet. 

“T have enjoyed my lunch,” he said, “and I’m 
going to run off from you two young men before I 
outstay my welcome.” 

“Don’t hurry, Meyer,” said Gatsby, without en- 
thusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem raised his hand in a sort 
of benediction. 

““You’re very polite, but I belong to another gen- 
eration,”’ he announced solemnly. ‘‘ You sit here and 
discuss your sports and your young ladies and 


88 THE GREAT GATSBY 


your—” He supplied an imaginary noun with an- 
other wave of his hand. ‘‘ As for me, I am fifty years 
old, and I won’t impose myself on you any longer.” 

As he shook hands and turned away his tragic 
nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said any- 
thing to offend him. 

‘“‘He becomes very sentimental sometimes,” ex- 
plained Gatsby. “‘This is one of his sentimental days. 
He’s quite a character around New York—a denizen 
of Broadway.” 

“Who is he, anyhow, an actor?” 

6é No.” 

““A dentist?” 

“Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he’s a gambler.’ Gatsby 
hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who 
fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.” 

“‘Fixed the World’s Series?” I repeated. 

_ The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, 
that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1910, but if 
I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it 
as a thing that merely happened, the end of some in- 
evitable chain. It never occurred to me that one 
man could start to play with the faith of fifty mil- 
lion people—with the single-mindedness of a burglar 
blowing a safe. 

“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after 
a minute. 

“He just saw the opportunity.” 

“Why isn’t he in jail?” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 89 


“They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart 
man.” 

I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter 
brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan 
across the crowded room. 

“Come along with me for a minute,” I said; ‘‘I’ve 
got to say hello to some one.”’ 

When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a 
dozen steps in our direction. 

‘“Where’ve you been?” he demanded eagerly. 
*“‘Daisy’s furious because you haven’t called up.” 

“This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.”’ 

They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfa- 
miliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsby’s 
face. 

‘“‘How’ve you been, anyhow?” demanded Tom of 
me. ‘‘How’d you happen to come up this far to 
eat?” 

“T’ve been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.” 

I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer 
there. 


One October day in nineteen-seventeen—— 

(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very 
straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the 
Plaza Hotel) 

—I was walking along from one place to another, half 
on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was hap- 


90 THE GREAT GATSBY 


pier on the lawns because I had on shoes from 
England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit 
into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt 
also that blew a little in the wind, and whenever 
this happened the red, white, and blue banners in 
front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said 
tut-tut-iut-tut, in a disapproving way. 

The largest of the banners and the largest of the 
lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house. She was just 
eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the 
most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. 
She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, 
and all day long the telephone rang in her house and 
excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded 
the privilege of monopolizing her that night. “ Any- 
ways, for an hour!” 

When I came opposite her house that morning 
her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was 
sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. 
They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t 
see me until I was five feet away. 

‘Hello, Jordan,’’ she called unexpectedly. ‘‘ Please 
come here.” 

I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, 
because of all the older girls I admired her most. 
She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and 
make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell 
them that she couldn’t come that day? The of- 
ficer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a 


THE GREAT GATSBY QI 


way that every young girl wants to be looked at 
sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I 
have remembered the incident ever since. His 
name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn’t lay eyes on him 
again for over four years—even after ’d met him 
on Long Island I didn’t realize it was the same man. 

That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year 
I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in 
tournaments, so I didn’t see Daisy very often. She 
went with a slightly older crowd—when she went 
with anyone at all. Wild rumors were circulating 
about her—how her mother had found her packing 
her bag one winter night to go to New York and 
say good-by to a soldier who was going overseas. 
She was effectually prevented, but she wasn’t on 
speaking terms with her family for several weeks. 
After that she didn’t play around with the soldiers 
any more, but only with a few flat-footed, short- 
sighted young men in town, who couldn’t get into 
the army at all. 

By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as 
ever. She had a début after the armistice, and in 
February she was presumably engaged to a man 
from New Orleans. In June she married Tom 
Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and cir- 
cumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He 
came down with a hundred people in four private 
cars, and hired a whole floor of the Muhlbach Hotel, 
and the day before the wedding he gave her a string 


92 THE GREAT GATSBY 


of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. 

I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half 
an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying 
on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered 
dress—and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle 
of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other. 

“°’Gratulate me,’’ she muttered. ‘‘Never had a 
drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it.” 

‘“‘What’s the matter, Daisy?” | 

I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl 
like that before. 

‘“‘Here, deares’.”” She groped around in a waste- 
basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out 
the string of pearls. ‘‘Take ’em down-stairs and 
give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em 
all Daisy’s change’ her mine. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ 
her mine !’”’ 

She began to cry—sne cried and cried. I rushed 
out and found her mother’s maid, and we locked the 
door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn’t 
let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with 
her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only 
let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that 
it was coming to pieces like snow. 

But she didn’t say another word. We gave her 
spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and 
hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour 
later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls 


THE GREAT GATSBY 93 


were around her neck and the incident was over. 
Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan 
without so much as a shiver, and started off on a 
three months’ trip to the South Seas. 

I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came 
back, and I thought I’d never seen a girl so mad 
about her husband. If he left the room for a minute 
she’d look around uneasily, and say: “‘Where’s Tom 
gone?”’ and wear the most abstracted expression 
until she saw him coming in the door. She used to 
sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, 
rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at 
him with unfathomable delight. It was touching to 
see them together—it made you laugh in a hushed, 
fascinated way. That was in August. A week after 
I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the 
Ventura road one night, and ripped a front wheel 
off his car. The girl who was with him got into the 
papers, too, because her arm was broken—she was 
one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara 
Hotel. 

The next April Daisy had her little girl, and they 
went to France for a year. I saw them one spring 
in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and then they 
came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was 
popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved 
with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and 
wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect 
reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t drink. It’s 


94 THE GREAT GATSBY 


a great advantage not to drink among hard-drink- 
ing people. You can hold your tongue, and, more- 
Over, you can time any little irregularity of your 
own so that everybody else is so blind that they 
don’t see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for 
amour at all—and yet there’s something in that 
voice of hers.’. . . 

Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name 
Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I 
asked you—do you remember ?—if you knew Gatsby | 
in West Egg. After you had gone home she came 
into my room and woke me up, and said: ‘‘ What 
Gatsby?” and when I described him—I was half 
asleep—she said in the strangest voice that it must 
be the man she used to know. It wasn’t until then 
that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her 
white car. 


When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this 
we had left the Plaza for half an hour and were 
driving in a victoria through Central Park. The 
sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of 
the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the clear 
voices of children, already gathered like crickets on 
the grass, rose through the hot twilight: 


“I’m the Sheik of Araby. 
Your love belongs to me. 
At night when. you’re asleep 


Into your tent I’ll creep——” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 95 


“It was a strange coincidence,’ I said. 

“But it wasn’t a coincidence at all.” 

“Why not?” 

“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would 
be just across the bay.” 

Then it had not been merely the stars to which 
he had aspired on that June night. He came alive 
to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his 
purposeless splendor. 

“‘He wants to know,” continued Jordan, “if you'll 
invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then 
let him come over.” 

‘The modesty of the demand shook me. He had 
waited five years and bought a mansion where he 
dispensed starlight to casual moths—so that he 
could “‘come over’’ some afternoon to a stranger’s 
garden. 

“Did I have to know all this before he could ask 
such a little thing?” 

““He’s afraid, he’s waited so long. He thought 
you might be offended. You see, he’s regular tough 
underneath it all.” 

Something worried me. 

“Why didn’t he ask you to arrange a meeting?” 

‘““He wants her to see his house,” she explained. 
“And your house is right next door.” 

ce Oh He? 

“T think he half expected her to wander into one 
of his parties, some night,’’ went on Jordan, “but 


96 THE GREAT GATSBY 


she never did. Then he began asking people casually 
if they knew her, and I was the first one he found. 
It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and 
you should have heard the elaborate way he worked 
up to it. Of course, I immediately suggested a 
luncheon in New York—and I thought he’d go mad: 

‘“**T don’t want to do anything out of the way!’ 
he kept saying. ‘I want to see her right next door.’ 

‘“‘When I said you were a particular friend of 
Tom’s, he started to abandon the whole idea. He 
doesn’t know very much about Tom, though he says 
he’s read a Chicago paper for years just on the 
chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy’s name.” 

It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little 
bridge I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoul- 
der and drew her toward me and asked her to din- 
ner. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and 
Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited 
person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who 
leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my 
arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort 
of heady excitement: ‘‘There are only the pursued, 
the pursuing, the busy and the tired.” 

‘And Daisy ought to have something in her life,”’ 
murmured Jordan to me. 

‘Does she want to see Gatsby?” 

‘‘She’s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn’t 
want her to know. You’re just supposed to invite 
her to tea.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 97 


We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the 
facade of Fifty-ninth Street, a block of delicate pale 
light, beamed down into the park. Unlike Gatsby 
and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied 
face floated along the dark cornices and blinding 
signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tighten- 
ing my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and 
so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face. 


CHAPTER V 


WHEN I came home to West Egg that night I was 
afraid for a moment that my house was on fire. 
Two o’clock and the whole corner of the peninsula 
was blazing with light, which fell unreal on the 
shrubbery and made thin elongating glints upon the 
roadside wires. Turning a corner, I saw that it was 
Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar. 

At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout 
that had resolved itself into ‘‘hide-and-go-seek”’ 
or ‘‘sardines-in-the-box”’ with all the house thrown 
open to the game. But there wasn’t a sound. Only 
wind in the trees, which blew the wires and made 
the lights go off and on again as if the house had 
winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned 
away I saw Gatsby walking toward me across his 
lawn. 

“Your place looks like the World’s Fair,” I said. 

‘Does it?”’ He turned his eyes toward it absently. 
‘“‘T have been glancing into some of the rooms. Let’s 
go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car.” 

Pit Stoo late. 4 

“Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming- 
pool? I haven’t made use of it all summer.” 

‘“T’ve got to go to bed.” 

98 


THE GREAT GATSBY 99 


“All right.” 

He waited, looking at me with suppressed eager- 
ness. 

“T talked with Miss Baker,” I said after a moment. 
“Tm going to call up Daisy to-morrow and invite 
her over here to tea.” 

‘Oh, that’s all right,” he said carelessly. ‘‘I don’t 
want to put you to any trouble.” 

“What day would suit you?” 

“What day would suit you?” he corrected me 
quickly. ‘‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble, 
you see.” 

“How about the day after to-morrow?” 

He considered for a moment. Then, with re- 
luctance: 

“T want to get the grass cut,” he said. 

We both looked down at the grass—there was a 
sharp line where my ragged lawn ended and the 
darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I suspected 
that he meant my grass. 

“There’s another little thing,’ he said uncer- 
tainly, and hesitated. 

‘Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I 
asked. 

“Oh, it isn’t about that. At least—” He fumbled 
with a series of beginnings. ‘‘Why, I thought—why, 
look here, old sport, you don’t make much money, 
do you?” 

“Not very much.” 


100 THE GREAT GATSBY 


This seemed to reassure him and he continued 
more confidently. 

“T thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my—you 
see, I carry on a little business on the side, a sort of 
side line, you understand. And I thought that if 
you don’t make very much— You’re selling bonds, 
aren’t you, old sport?”’ 

“Trying to.” 

“Well, this would interest you. It wouldn’t take 
up much of your time and you might pick up a nice 
bit of money. It happens to be a rather confidential 
sort of thing.’’ 

I realize now that under different circumstances 
that conversation might have been one of the crises 
of my life. But, because the offer was obviously 
and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no 
choice except to cut him off there. 

“ve got my hands full,” I said. “I’m much 
obliged but I couldn’t take on any more work.” 

“You wouldn’t have to do any business with 
Wolfshiem.” Evidently he thought that I was shy- 
ing away from the ‘“‘gonnegtion” mentioned at 
lunch, but I assured him he was wrong. He waited 
a moment longer, hoping I’d begin a conversation, 
but I was too absorbed to be responsive, so he went 
unwillingly home. 

The evening had made me light-headed and happy; 
I think I walked into a deep sleep as I entered my 
front door. So I don’t know whether or not Gatsby 


THE GREAT GATSBY IOI 


went to Coney Island, or for how many hours he 
“glanced into rooms” while his house blazed gaudily 
on. I called up Daisy from the office next morning, 
and invited her to come to tea. 

“Don’t bring Tom,” I warned her. 

ce What?” 

“Don’t bring Tom.” 

“Who is ‘Tom’?” she asked innocently. 

The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven 
o’clock a man in a raincoat, dragging a lawn-mower, 
tapped at my front door and said that Mr. Gatsby 
had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded 
me that I had forgotten to tell my Finn to come 
back, so I drove into West Egg Village to search for 
her among soggy whitewashed alleys and to buy 
some cups and lemons and flowers. 

The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock 
a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby’s, with innumer- 
able receptacles to contain it. An hour later the 
front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a 
white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, 
hurried in. He was pale, and there were dark signs 
of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. 

“Ts everything all right?” he asked immediately. 

“The grass looks fine, if that’s what you mean.” 

“What grass?” he inquired blankly. ‘Oh, the 
grass in the yard.” He looked out the window at it, 
but, judging from his expression, I don’t believe he 
saw a thing. 


TO2 THE GREAT GATSBY 


‘Looks very good,” he remarked vaguely. “One 
of the papers said they thought the rain would stop 
about four. 1 think it was The Journal. Have you 
got everything you need in the shape of—of tea?” 

I took him into the pantry, where he looked a 
little reproachfully at the Finn. Together we scru- 
tinized the twelve lemon cakes from the delicatessen 
shop. 

“Will they do?” I asked. 

“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he 
added hollowly, “*. . . old sport.” 

The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp 
mist, through which occasional thin drops swam like 
dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes through a 
copy of Clay’s “Economics,” starting at the Fin- 
nish tread that shook the kitchen floor, and peering 
toward the bleared windows from time to time as 
if a series of invisible but alarming happenings 
were taking place outside. Finally he got up and 
informed me, in an uncertain voice, that he was 
going home. 

“Why’s that?” 

“Nobody’s coming to tea. It’s too late!” He 
looked at his watch as if there was some pressing 
demand on his time elsewhere. “I can’t wait all 
day.” | 
“Don’t be silly; it’s just two minutes to four.” 

He sat down miserably, as if I had pushed him, 
and simultaneously there was the sound of a motor 


THE GREAT GATSBY 103 


turning into my lane. We both jumped up, and, a 
little harrowed myself, I went out into the yard. 

Under the dripping bare lilac-trees a large open 
car was coming up the drive. It stopped. Daisy’s 
face, tipped sideways beneath a three-cornered lav- 
ender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic 
smile. 

“Ts this absolutely where you live, my dearest 
one?” 

The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild 
tonic in the rain. I had to follow the sound of it 
for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone, 
before any words came through. A damp streak of 
hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek, 
and her hand was wet with glistening drops as I 
took it to help her from the car. 

‘“‘Are you in love with me,” she said low in my 
ear, ‘‘or why did I have to come alone?” 

““That’s the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your 
chauffeur to go far away and spend an hour.” 

“Come back in an hour, Ferdie.” Then in a grave 
murmur: ‘‘His name is Ferdie.”’ 

“Does the gasoline affect his nose?” 

“T don’t think so,” she said innocently. “Why?” 

We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the 
living-room was deserted. 

“Well, that’s funny,” I exclaimed. 

“What’s funny?” 

She turned her head as there was a light dignified 


104 THE GREAT GATSBY 


knocking at the front door. I went out and opened 
it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged 
like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a 
puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes. 

With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked 
by me into the hall, turned sharply as if he were on 
a wire, and disappeared into the living-room. It 
wasn’t a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of 
my own heart I pulled the door to against the in- 
creasing rain. 

For half a minute there wasn’t a enn: Then 
from the living-room I heard a sort of choking mur- 
mur and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy’s voice 
on a clear artificial note: 

“T certainly am awfully glad to see you again.” 

A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to 
do in the hall, so I went into the room. 

Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclin- 
ing against the mantelpiece in a strained counter- 
feit of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head 
leaned back so far that it rested against the face of 
a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position 
his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was 
sitting, frightened but graceful, on the edge of a 
stiff chair. 

“We’ve met before,’’ muttered Gatsby. His eyes 
glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with 
an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock 
took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pres- 


THE GREAT GATSBY 105 


sure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught 
it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. 
Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of 
the sofa and his chin in his hand. 

“Tm sorry about the clock,” he said. 

My own face had now assumed a deep tropical 
burn. I couldn’t muster up a single commonplace 
out of the thousand in my head. 

“Tt’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically. 

I think we all believed for a moment that it had 
smashed in pieces on the floor. 

‘““We haven’t met for many years,” said Daisy, 
her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be. 

‘Five years next November.” 

The automatic quality of Gatsby’s answer set us 
all back at least another minute. I had them both 
on their feet with the desperate suggestion that they 
help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac 
Finn brought it in on a tray. 

Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a 
certain physical decency established itself. Gatsby 
got himself into a shadow and, while Daisy and I 
talked, looked conscientiously from one to the other 
of us with tense, unhappy eyes. However, as calm- 
ness wasn’t an end in itself, I made an excuse at the 
first possible moment, and got to my feet. 

“Where are you going?” demanded Gatsby in 
immediate alarm. 

b Ulisberback.” 


a 


106 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“ve got to speak to you about something be- 
fore you go.” 

He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed 
the door, and whispered: ‘Oh, God!” in a miser- 
able way. 

““What’s the matter?” 

“This is a terrible mistake,” he said, shaking his 
head from side to side, ‘‘a terrible, terrible mistake.” 

‘““You’re just embarrassed, that’s all,” and luckily 
I added: “Daisy’s embarrassed too.”’ 

“‘She’s embarrassed ?”’ he repeated incredulously. 

‘Just as much as you are.” 

“Don’t talk so loud.” 

“You’re acting like a little boy,” I broke out im- 
patiently. “Not only that, but you’re rude. Daisy’s 
sitting in there all alone.” 

He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at 
me with unforgettable reproach, and, opening the 
door cautiously, went back into the other room. 

I walked out the back way—just as Gatsby had 
when he had made his nervous circuit of the house 
half an hour before—and ran for a huge black 
knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric 
against the rain. Once more it was pouring, and 
my irregular lawn, well-shaved by Gatsby’s gar- 
dener, abounded in small muddy swamps and pre- 
historic marshes. There was nothing to look at 
from under the tree except Gatsby’s enormous house, 
so I stared at it, like Kant at his church steeple, for 


THE GREAT GATSBY 107 


half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the 
“period” craze, a decade before, and there was a 
story that he’d agreed to pay five years’ taxes on all 
the neighboring cottages if the owners would have 
their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their re- 
fusal took the heart out of his plan to Found a 
Family—he went into an immediate decline. His 
children sold his house with the black wreath still 
on the door. Americans, while willing, even eager, 
to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being 
peasantry. 

After half an hour, the sun shone again, and the 
grocer’s automobile rounded Gatsby’s drive with 
the raw material for his servants’ dinner—I felt sure 
he wouldn’t eat a spoonful. A maid began open- 
ing the upper windows of his house, appeared mo- 
mentarily in each, and, leaning from the large cen- 
tral bay, spat meditatively into the garden. It was 
time I went back. While the rain continued it had 
seemed like the murmur of their voices, rising and 
swelling a little now and then with gusts of emo- 
tion. But in the new silence I felt that silence had 
fallen within the house too. 

I went in—after making every possible noise in 
the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove—but I 
don’t believe they heard a sound. They were sitting 
at either end of the couch, looking at each other as 
if some question had been asked, or was in the air, 
and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. 


108 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when I 
came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with 
her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a 
change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He 
literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of ex- 
ultation a new well-being radiated from him and 
filled the little room. 

“Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn’t 
seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was 
going to shake hands. 

“Tt’s stopped raining.” 

“‘Has it?’”? When he realized what I was talking 
about, that there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in 
the room, he smiled like a weather man, like an 
ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the 
news to Daisy. “‘What do you think of that? It’s 
stopped raining.” 

“Tm glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, griev- 
ing beauty, told only of her unexpected joy. 

“TI want you and Daisy to come over to my 
house,” he said, “‘I’d like to show her around.” 

‘“You’re sure you want me to come?” 

‘Absolutely, old sport.” 

Daisy went up-stairs to wash her face—too late 
IT thought with humiliation of my towels—while 
Gatsby and I waited on the lawn. 

““My house looks well, doesn’t it?”’ he demanded. 
**See how the whole front of it catches the light.” 

I agreed that it was splendid. | 


THE GREAT GATSBY I09 


“Yes.”” His eyes went over it, every arched door 
and square tower. ‘“‘It took me just three years to 
earn the money that bought it.” 

“T thought you inherited your money.” 

“TY did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but 
I lost most of it in the big panic—the panic of the 
war.” 

I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for 
when I asked him what business he was in he an- 
swered: ‘‘That’s my affair,”’ before he realized that 
it wasn’t an appropriate reply. 

“‘Oh, I’ve been in several things,” he corrected 
himself. “‘I was in the drug business and then I was 
in the oil business. But I’m not in either one now.” 
He looked at me with more attention. “Do you 
mean you’ve been thinking over what I proposed 
the other night?” 

Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the 
house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress 
gleamed in the sunlight. 

“That huge place there?’ she cried pointing. 

“Do you like it?” 

“T love it, but I don’t see how you live there all 
alone.” 

“T keep it always full of interesting people, night 
and day. People who do interesting things. Cele- 
brated people.” 

Instead of taking the short cut along the Sound 
we went down to the road and entered by the big 


IIO THE GREAT GATSBY 


postern. With enchanting murmurs Daisy admired 
this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against 
the sky, admired the gardens, the sparkling odor of 
jonquils and the frothy odor of hawthorn and plum 
blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the- 
gate. It was strange to reach the marble steps and 
find no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, 
and hear no sound but bird voices in the trees. 

And inside, as we wandered through Marie An- 
toinette music-rooms and Restoration Salons, I felt 
that there were guests concealed behind every 
couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly 
silent until we had passed through. As Gatsby 
closed the door of ‘‘the Merton College Library” I 
could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break 
into ghostly laughter. 

We went up-stairs, through period bedrooms 
swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with 
new flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms, 
and bathrooms with sunken baths—intruding into 
one chamber where a dishevelled man in pajamas 
was doing liver exercises on the floor. It was Mr. 
Klipspringer, the “‘boarder.”? I had seen him wan- 
dering hungrily about the beach that morning. 
Finally we came to Gatsby’s own apartment, a bed- 
room and a bath, and an Adam’s study, where we 
sat down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he 
took from a cupboard in the wall. 

He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I 


THE GREAT GATSBY IIl 


think he revalued everything in his house according 
to the measure of response it drew from her well- 
loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his 
possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual 
and astounding presence none of it was any longer 
real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of 
stairs. 

His bedroom was the simplest room of all—except 
where the dresser was garnished with a toilet set of 
pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush with delight, 
and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down 
and shaded his eyes and began to laugh. 

‘*Tt’s the funniest thing, old sport,” he said hilari- 
ously. “I can’t— When I try to i 

He had passed visibly through two states and was 
entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and 
his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder 
at her presence. He had been full of the idea so 
long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited 
with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable 
pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was 
running down like an overwound clock. 

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us 
two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed 
suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, 
piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high. 

“T’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. 
He sends over a selection of things at the beginning 
of each season, spring and fall.” 





112 THE GREAT GATSBY 


He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing 
them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen 
and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds 
as they fell and covered the table in many colored 
disarray. While we admired he brought more and 
the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with 
stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple- 
green and lavender and faint orange, with mono- 
grams of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained 
sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began 
to ary stormily. 

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her 
voice muffled in the thick folds. “‘It makes me sad 
because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts 
before.”’ 


After the house, we were to see the grounds and 
- the swimming-pool, and the hydroplane and the mid- 
summer flowers—but outside Gatsby’s window it 
began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at 
the corrugated surface of the Sound. 

“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home 
across the bay,” said Gatsby. “‘ You always have a 
green light that burns all night at the end of your 
dock.” 

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he 
seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly 
it had occurred to him that the colossal significance 
of that light had now vanished forever. Compared 


THE GREAT GATSBY 113 


to the great distance that had separated him from 
Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touch- 
ing her. It had- seemed as close as a star to the 
moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. 
His count of enchanted objects had diminished by 
one. 

I began to walk about the room, examining vari- 
ous indefinite objects in the half darkness. A large 
photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume 
attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk. 

““Who’s this?” 

“That? That’s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.” 

The name sounded faintly familiar. 

““He’s dead now. He used to be my best friend 
years ago.”’ 

There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in 
yachting costume, on the bureau—Gatsby with his 
head thrown back defiantly—taken apparently when 
he was about eighteen. 

“T adore it,” exclaimed Daisy. ‘‘The pompadour ! 
You never told me you had a pompadour—or a 
yacht.” 

“Look at this,” said Gatsby quickly. “‘Here’s a 
lot of clippings—about you.” 

They stood side by side examining it. I was going 
to ask to see the rubies when the phone rang, and 
Gatsby took up the receiver. 

Sivessa). -Well)1 can’t talk now. ......:I:can’t 
talk now, old sport. ... I said a small town... . 


I14 THE GREAT GATSBY 


He must know what a small town is. . . . Well, he’s 
no use to us if Detroit is his idea of a small town. .. .” 
He rang off. 


““Come here quick!” cried Daisy at the window. 

The rain was still falling, but the darkness had 
parted in the west, and there was a pink and golden 
billow of foamy clouds above the sea. 

“Look at that,” she whispered, and then after a 
moment: “I’d like to just get one of those pink 
clouds and put you in it and push you around.” 

I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; 
perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfac- 
torily alone. 

“T know what we'll do,” said Gatsby, ‘‘we’ll have 
Klipspringer play the piano.” 

He went out of the room calling “Ewing!” and 
returned in a few minutes accompanied by an em- 
barrassed, slightly worn young man, with shell- 
rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair. He was now 
decently clothed in a “sport shirt,’’ open at the neck, 
sneakers, and duck trousers of a nebulous hue. 

“Did we interrupt your exercises?” inquired 
Daisy politely. 

“T was asleep,” cried Mr. Klipspringer, in a 
spasm of embarrassment. ‘‘ That is, ’'d been asleep. 
ehenslicotiup ie. 3? 

“Klipspringer plays the piano,”’ said Gatsby, cut- 
ting him off. “Don’t you, Ewing, old sport ?”’ 

“T don’t play well. I don’t—I hardly play at all. 
I’m all out of prac hi 





THE GREAT GATSBY IIs 


“We'll go down-stairs,” interrupted Gatsby. He 
flipped a switch. The gray windows disappeared as 
the house glowed full of light. 

In the music-room Gatsby turned on a solitary 
lamp beside the piano. He lit Daisy’s cigarette from 
a trembling match, and sat down with her on a couch 
far across the room, where there was no light save 
' what the gleaming floor bounced in from the hall. 

When Klipspringer had played ‘‘The Love Nest” 
he turned around on the bench and searched un- 
happily for Gatsby in the gloom. 

“T’m all out of practice, you see. I told you I 
couldn’t play. I’m all out of prac a 

“Don’t talk so much, old sport,’ commanded 
Gatsby. “Play!” 





“In the morning, 
In the evening, 
Ain’t we got fun——” 


Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint 
flow of thunder along the Sound. All the lights were 
going on in West Egg now; the electric trains, men- 
carrying, were plunging home through the rain 
from New York. It was the hour of a profound 
human change, and excitement was generating on 
the air. 


“One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer 
The rich get richer and the poor get—children. 
In the meantime, 


In between time——”’ 


116 "THE GREAT GATSBY 


As I went over to say good-by I saw that the ex- 
pression of bewilderment had come back into Gats- 
by’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to 
him as to the quality of his present happiness. 
Almost five years! There must have been moments 
even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of 
his dreams—not through her own fault, but because 
of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone 
beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown 
himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it 
all the time, decking it out with every bright feather 
that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness 
can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly 
heart. 

As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, 
visibly. His hand took hold of hers, and as she said 
something low in his ear he turned toward her with 
a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him 
most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because 
it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a death- 
less song. 

They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up 
and held out her hand; Gatsby didn’t know me now 
at all. I looked once more at them and they looked 
back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. 
Then I went out of the room and down the marble 
steps into the rain, leaving them there together. 


CHAPTER VI 


ABOUT this time an ambitious young reporter from 
New York arrived one morning at Gatsby’s door and 
asked him if he had anything to say. 

‘““Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby 
politely. : 

‘““Why—any statement to give out.” 

It transpired after a confused five minutes that 
the man had heard Gatsby’s name around his office 
in a connection which he either wouldn’t reveal or 
didn’t fully understand. This was his day off and 
with laudable initiative he had hurried out ‘‘to see.” 

It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s in- 
stinct was right. Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about 
by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality 
and so become authorities upon his past, had in- 
creased all summer until he fell just short of being 
news. Contemporary legends such as the ‘under- 
ground pipe-line to Canada”’ attached themselves to 
him, and there was one persistent story that he 
didn’t live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked 
like a house and was moved secretly up and down 
the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions 
were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North 
Dakota, isn’t easy to say. 

117 


118 THE GREAT GATSBY 


James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, 
his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen 
and at the specific moment that witnessed the begin- 
ning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht 
drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake 
Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing 
along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey 
and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay 
Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the 
Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might 
catch him and break him up in half an hour. 

I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, 
even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuc- 
cessful farm people—his imagination had never really 
accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was 
that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang 
from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a 
son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, 
means just that—and he must be about His Fa- 
ther’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and 
meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort 
of Jay Gatsby that'a seventeen year-old boy would 
be likely to invent, and to this conception he was 
faithful to the end. 

For over a year he had been beating his way along 
the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger 
and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that 
brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening 
body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half- 


THE GREAT GATSBY TI9Q 


lazy work of the bracing days. He knew women 
early, and since they spoiled him he became contemp- 
tuous of them, of young virgins because they were 
ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical 
about things which in his overwhelming self-absorb- 
tion he took for granted. 

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. 
The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted 
him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudi- 
ness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked 
on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet 
light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night 
he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsi- 
ness closed down upon some vivid scene with an 
oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries pro- 
vided an outlet for his imagination; they were a 
satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise 
that the rock of the world was founded securely on 
a fairy’s wing. 

An instinct toward his future glory had led him, 
some months before, to the small Lutheran College 
of St. Olaf’s in northern Minnesota. He stayed there 
two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to 
the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and de- 
spising the janitor’s work with which he was to pay 
his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake 
Superior, and he was still searching for something to 
do on the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor 
in the shallows alongshore. 


120 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the 
Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for 
metal since seventy-five. The transactions in Mon- 
tana copper that made him many times a millionaire 
found him physically robust but on the verge of soft- 
mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number 
of women tried to separate him from his money. 
The none too savory ramifications by which Ella 
Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de 
Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in 
a yacht, were common property of the turgid jour- 
nalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too 
hospitable shores for five years when he turned up 
as James Gatz’s destiny in Little Girl Bay. 

To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking 
up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all 
the beauty and glamour in the world. 1 suppose he 
smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that 
people liked him when he smiled. At any rate 
Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited 
the brand new name) and found that he was quick 
and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he 
took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six 
pair of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. 
And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and 
the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too. 

He was employed in a vague personal capacity— 
while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, 
mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan 


THE GREAT GATSBY 120 


Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody 
drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such 
contingencies by reposing more and more trust in 
Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years, during 
which the boat went three times around the Con- 
tinent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for 
the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in 
Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably 
died. 

I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s 
bedroom, a gray, florid man with a hard, empty face 
—the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of 
American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard 
the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. 
It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so 
little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women 
used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he 
formed the habit of letting liquor alone. 

And it was from Cody that he inherited money— 
a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t 
get it. He never understood the legal device that 
was used against him, but what remained of the 
millions went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with 
his singularly appropriate education; the vague con- 
tour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality 
of a man. 


He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put 
it down here with the idea of exploding those first 


122 THE GREAT GATSBY 


wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren’t 
even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a 
time of confusion, when I had reached the point of 
believing everything and nothing about him. So I 
take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so 
to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of mis- 
conceptions away. 

It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. 
For several weeks I didn’t see him or hear his voice 
on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting 
around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself 
with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his 
house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t been there 
two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan ~ 
in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the 
really surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened 
before. 

They were a party of three on horseback—Tom 
and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a 
brown riding-habit, who had been there previously. 

““T’m delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing 
on his porch. “I’m delighted that you dropped in.” 

As though they cared! 

“Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” 
He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. 
“Til have something to drink for yO in just a 
minute.” 

He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom 
was there. But he would be uneasy anyhow until he 


THE GREAT GATSBY 123 


had given them something, realizing in a vague way 
that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted 
nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little cham- 
pagne? Nothing at all, thanks... . I’m sorry—— 

“Did you have a nice ride?”’ 

“Very good roads around here.” 

“I suppose the automobiles——’ 

py cal. 

Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned 
to Tom, who had accepted the introduction as a 
stranger. 

“TI believe we’ve met somewhere before, Mr. 
Buchanan.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously 
not remembering. ‘“‘So we did. I remember very 
well.” 

‘‘ About two weeks ago.” 

“That’s right. You were with Nick here.” 

“TI know your wife,” continued Gatsby, almost 
aggressively. 

“That so?”’ 

Tom turned to me. 

“Vou live near here, Nick?” 

‘‘Next door.” 

“That so?” 

Mr. Sloane didn’t enter into the conversation, 
but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman 
said nothing either—until unexpectedly, after two 
highballs, she became cordial. 


3 


124 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“We'll all come over to your next party, Mr. 
Gatsby,” she suggested. “‘What do you say?” 

“Certainly; Pd be delighted to have you.” 

“Be ver’ nice,” said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. 

“‘Well—think ought to be starting home.” 
“Please don’t hurry,” Gatsby urged them. He had 
control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of 
Tom. “Why don’t you—-why don’t you stay for 
supper? I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people 
dropped in from New York.” 

“You come to supper with me,” said the lady 
enthusiastically. “Both of you.” 

This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet. 

‘““Come along,” he said—but to her only. 

‘“‘T mean it,” she insisted. “‘I’d love to have you. 
Lots of room.” 

Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted 
to go, and he didn’t see that Mr. Sloane had deter- 
mined he shouldn’t. 

‘““T’m afraid I won’t be able to,”’ I said. 

‘Well, you come,” she urged, concentrating on 
Gatsby. 

Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear. 

‘““We won’t be late if we start now,” she insisted 
aloud. 

“T haven’t got a horse,” said Gatsby. “I used to 
ride in the army, but I’ve never bought a horse. 
T’ll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for 
just a minute.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 125 


The rest of us walked out on the porch, where 
Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conver- 
sation aside. 

““My God, I believe the man’s coming,” said Tom. 
‘““Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want him ?”’ 

‘She says she does want him.” 

“She has a big dinner party and he won’t know 
a soul there.’’ He frowned. “I wonder where in the 
devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned 
in my ideas, but women run around too much these 
days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.” 

Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down 
the steps and mounted their horses. 

‘Come on,” said Mr. Sloane to Tom, “‘we’re late. 
We've got to go.” And then to me: “Tell him we 
couldn’t wait, will you?” 

Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged 
a cool nod, and they trotted quickly down the drive, 
disappearing under the August foliage just as Gatsby, 
with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the 
front door. 

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s running 
around alone, for on the following Saturday night he 
came with her to Gatsby’s party. Perhaps his pres- 
ence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppres- 
siveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby’s 
other parties that summer. There were the same 
people, or at least the same sort of people, the same 
profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, 


126 THE GREAT GATSBY 


many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasant- 
ness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn’t 
been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown 
used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world com- 
plete in itself, with its own standards and its own 
great figures, second to nothing because it had no 
consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at 
it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably sad- 
dening to look through new eyes at things upon which 
you have expended your own powers of adjustment. 

They arrived at twilight, and, as we strolled out 
among the sparkling hundreds, Daisy’s voice was 
playing murmurous tricks in her throat. 

‘These things excite me so,’ she whispered. ‘‘If 
you want to kiss me any time during the evening, 
Nick, just let me know and I'll be glad to arrange it 
for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green 
card. I’m giving out green——” 

“Look around,” suggested Gatsby 

“Tm looking around. [’m having a marvel- 
lous-———”’ 

‘““You must see the faces of many people you’ve 
heard about.” 

Tom’s arrogant eyes roamed the crowd. 

‘“We don’t go around very much,” he said; “‘in 
fact, I was just thinking I don’t know a soul here.” 

‘Perhaps you know that lady,” Gatsby indicated 
a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who 
sat in state under a white-plum tree. Tom and Daisy 


THE GREAT GATSBY 127 


stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accom- 
panies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity 
of the movies. 

**She’s lovely,” said Daisy. 

“The man bending over her is her director.” 

He took them ceremoniously from group to group: 


“Mrs. Buchanan ...and Mr. Buchanan—”’ 
After an instant’s hesitation he added: “‘the polo 
player.” 


“Oh no,” objected Tom quickly, ‘‘not me.” 

But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for 
Tom remained “the polo player’’ for the rest of the 
evening. 

““T’ve never met so many celebrities,” Daisy ex- 
claimed, ‘‘I liked that man—what was his name ?— 
with the sort of blue nose.” 

Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small 
producer. 

“Well, I liked him anyhow.” 

“Id a little rather not be the polo player,” said 
Tom pleasantly, ‘‘I’d rather look at all these famous 
people in—in oblivion.”’ 

Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being 
surprised by his graceful, conservative fox-trot—I 
had never seen him dance before. Then they saun- 
tered over to my house and sat on the steps for half 
an hour, while at her request I remained watchfully 
in the garden. “In case there’s a fire or a flood,” she 
explained, “‘or any act of God.” 


128 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting 
down to supper together. “Do you mind if I eat 
with some people over here?” he said. “A fellow’s 
getting off some funny stuff.” 

“‘Go ahead,” answered Daisy genially, “‘and if you 
want to take down any addresses here’s my little 
gold pencil.” . . . She looked around after a moment 
and told me the girl was ‘‘common but pretty,” 
and I knew that except for the half-hour she’d been 
alone with Gatsby she wasn’t having a good time. 

We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was 
my fault—Gatsby had been called to the phone, and 
I’d enjoyed these same people only two weeks before. 
But what had amused me then turned septic on the 
air now. 

“How do you feel, Miss Baedeker ?” 

The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to 
slump against my shoulder. At this inquiry she sat 
up and opened her eyes. 

ce Wha d ? 99 

A massive and lethargic woman, who had been 
urging Daisy to play golf with her at the local club 
to-morrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker’s defence: 

‘Oh, she’s all right now. When she’s had five or 
six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. 
I tell her she ought to leave it alone.” 

“I do leave it alone,” affirmed the accused hol- 
lowly. 

“We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet 


THE GREAT GATSBY 129 


here: ‘There’s somebody that needs your help, 
Doc.’”’ 

““She’s much obliged, I’m sure,” said another 
friend, without gratitude, “but you 'got her dress 
all wet when you stuck her head in the pool.” 

‘Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a 
pool,’ mumbled Miss Baedeker. ‘“‘They almost 
drowned me once over in New Jersey.” 

“Then you ought to leave it alone,’ countered 
Doctor Civet. 

“Speak for yourself!’’ cried Miss Baedeker vio- 
lently. ‘‘Your hand shakes. I wouldn’t let you 
operate on me!” 

It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember 
was standing with Daisy and watching the moving- 
picture director and his Star. They were still under 
the white-plum tree and their faces were touching 
except for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. 
It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bend- 
ing toward her all evening to attain this proximity, 
and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ulti- 
mate degree and kiss at her cheek. 

“T like her,” said Daisy, “‘I think she’s lovely.” 

But the rest offended her—and inarguably, be- 
cause it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was 
appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “‘place’’ 
that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island 
fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed 
under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive 


130 THE GREAT GATSBY 


fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut 
from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful 
in the very simplicity she failed to understand. 

I sat on the front steps with them while they 
waited for their car. It was dark here in front; only 
the bright door sent ten square feet of light volley- 
ing out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a 
shadow moved against a dressing-room blind above, 
gave way to another shadow, an indefinite proces- 
sion of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an 
invisible glass. 

“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom 
suddenly. ‘‘Some big bootlegger ?”’ 

““Where’d you hear that?” I inquired. 

“‘T didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these 
newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you 
know.” 

“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly. 

He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the 
drive crunched under his feet. 

‘“‘Well, he certainly must have strained himself to 
get this menagerie together.” 

A breeze stirred the gray haze of Daisy’s fur col- 
lar. 

‘““At least they are more interesting than the 
people we know,” she said with an effort. 

‘You didn’t look so interested.” 

“Well, I was.” 

Tom laughed and turned to me. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 131 


“Did you notice Daisy’s face when that girl asked 
her to put her under a cold shower?” 

Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, 
rythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each 
word that it had never had before and would never 
have again. When the melody rose her voice broke 
up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices 
have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm 
human magic upon the air. 

“Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,” 
she said suddenly. “‘That girl hadn’t been invited. 
They simply force their way in and he’s too polite 
to object.” 

‘‘T’d like to know who he is and what he does,” 
insisted Tom. ‘‘ And I think I’ll make a point of find- 
ing out.” 

“T can tell you right now,” she answered. “‘He 
owned some drug-stores, a lot of drug-stores. He 
built them up himself.” 

The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive. 

“*Good night, Nick,” said Daisy. 

Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of 
the steps, where ‘‘Three o’Clock in the Morning,” 
a neat, sad little waltz of that year, was drifting out 
the open door. After all, in the very casualness of 
Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities 
totally absent from her world. What was it up there 
in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? 
What would happen now in the dim, incalculable 


132 THE GREAT GATSBY 


hours? Perhaps some unbelievable guest would 
arrive, a person infinitely rare and to be marvelled 
at, some authentically radiant young girl who with 
one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical 
encounter, would blot out those five years of un- 
wavering devotion. 

I stayed late that night, Gatsby asked me to wait 
until he was free, and I lingered in the garden until 
the inevitable swimming party had run up, chilled 
and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights 
were extinguished in the guest-rooms overhead. 
When he came down the steps at last the tanned skin 
was drawn unusually tight on his face, and his eyes 
were bright and tired. 

‘She didn’t like it,” he said immediately. 

“Of course she did.” 

“She didn’t like it,” he insisted. “She didn’t have 
a good time.” 

He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable 
depression. 

“*T feel far away from her,” he said. “It’s hard to 
make her understand.” 

“You mean about the dance?” 

“The dance?” He dismissed all the dances he had 
given with a snap of his fingers. “‘Old sport, the dance 
is unimportant.” 

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she 
should go to Tom and say: ‘“‘I never loved you.” 
After she had obliterated four years with that sen- 
tence they could decide upon the more practical 


THE GREAT GATSBY 133 


measures to be taken. One of them was that, after 
she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and 
be married from her house—just as if it were five 
years ago. 

‘* And she doesn’t understand,” he said. “‘She used 
to be able to understand. We'd sit for hours——” 

He broke off and began to walk up and down a 
desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and 
crushed flowers. 

“T wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. 
“You can’t repeat the past.” 

““Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. 
“Why of course you can!” 

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were 
lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of 
reach of his hand. 

“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was 
before,” he said, nodding determinedly. ‘‘She’ll see.” 

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that 
he wanted to recover something, some idea of him- 
self perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His 
life had been confused and disordered since then, 
but if he could once return to a certain starting 
place and go over it all slowly, he could find out 
what that thing was... . 

. . . One autumn night, five years before, they 
had been walking down the street when the leaves 
were falling, and they came to a place where there 
were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moon- 
light. They stopped here and turned toward each 


134 THE GREAT GATSBY 


other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious 
excitement in it which comes at the two changes of 
the year. The quiet lights in the houses were hum- 
ming out into the darkness and there was a stir and 
bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye 
Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really 
formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above 
the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, 
and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp 
down the incomparable milk of wonder. 

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white 
face came up to his own. He knew that when he 
kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable vi- 
sions to her perishable breath, his mind would never 
romp again like the mind of God. 5o he waited, 
listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork 
that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed 
her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like 
a flower and the incarnation was complete. 

Through all he said, even through his appalling 
sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an 
elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had 
heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a 
phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips 
parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more 
struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. 
But they made no sound, and what I had almost’ 
remembered was uncommunicable forever. 


CHAPTER VII 


It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its 
highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one 
Saturday night—and, as obscurely as it had begun, 
his career as Trimalchio was over. Only gradually 
did I become aware that the automobiles which 
turned expectantly into his drive stayed for just 
a minute and then drove sulkily away. Wondering 
if he were sick I went over to find out—an unfa- 
miliar butler with a villainous face squinted at me 
suspiciously from the door. 

“Is Mr. Gatsby sick?” 

“Nope.” After a pause he added “‘sir’”’ in a dila- 
tory, grudging way. 

“I hadn’t seen him around, and I was rather wor- 
ried. Tell him Mr. Carraway came over.” 

“Whor” he demanded rudely. 

“Carraway.” 

“Carraway. All right, I'll tell him.” 

Abruptly he slammed the door. 

‘My Finn informed me that Gatsby had dismissed 
every servant in his house a week ago and replaced 
them with half a dozen others, who never went into 
West Egg Village to be bribed by the tradesmen, 
but ordered moderate supplies over the telephone. 
The grocery boy reported that the kitchen looked 

135 


136 THE GREAT GATSBY 


like a pigsty, and the general opinion in the village 
was that the new people weren’t servants at all. 

Next day Gatsby called me on the phone. 

“Going away?” I inquired. 

“No, old sport.” 

“T hear you fired all your servants.” 

“‘T wanted somebody who wouldn’t gossip. Daisy 
comes over quite often—in the afternoons.” 

So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card 
house at the disapproval in her eyes. 

‘“They’re some people Wolfshiem wanted to do 
something for. They’re all brothers and sisters. 
They used to run a small hotel.” 

Helisees 

He was calling up at Daisy’s request—would I 
come to lunch at her house to-morrow? Miss Baker 
would be there. Half an hour later Daisy herself 
telephoned and seemed relieved to find that I was 
coming. Something was up. And yet I couldn’t be- 
lieve that they would choose this occasion for a 
scene—especially for the rather harrowing scene 
that Gatsby had outlined in the garden. 

The next day was broiling, almost the last, cer- 
tainly the warmest, of the summer. As my train 
emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the hot 
whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the 
simmering hush at noon. The straw seats of the car 
hovered on the edge of combustion; the woman next 
to me perspired delicately for a while into her white 


THE GREAT GATSBY 139 


shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened 
under her fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat 
with a desolate cry. Her pocket-book slapped to the 
floor. 

“Oh, my!” she gasped. 

I picked it up with a weary bend and handed it 
back to her, holding it at arm’s length and by the 
extreme tip of the corners to indicate that I had no 
designs upon it—but every one near by, including 
the woman, suspected me just the same. 

“Hot!” said the conductor to familiar faces. 
"some weather!... Hot!... Hot!... Hot!... 
Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Isit...?” 

My commutation ticket came back to me with a 
dark stain from his hand. That any one should care 
in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed, whose head 
made damp the pajama pocket over his heart! 

. . . Through the hall of the Buchanans’ house 
blew a faint wind, carrying the sound of the tele- 
phone bell out to Gatsby and me as we waited at 
the door. 

‘The master’s body!” roared the butler into the 
mouthpiece. “I’m sorry, madame, but we can’t 
furnish it—it’s far too hot to touch this noon!” 

What he really said was: “Yes... Yes... Vl 
See! 

He set down the receiver and came toward us, 


glistening slightly, to take our stiff straw hats. 
‘“‘Madame expects you in the salon!” he cried, 


138 THE GREAT GATSBY 


needlessly indicating the direction. In this heat 
every extra gesture was an affront to the common 
store of life. 

The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark 
and cool. Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous 
couch, like silver idols weighing down their own 
white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans. 

‘““We can’t move,” they said together. 

Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan, 
rested for a moment in mine. 

‘‘And Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the athlete?” I 
inquired. 

Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, 
husky, at the hall telephone. 

Gatsby stood in the centre of the crimson carpet 
and gazed around with fascinated eyes. Daisy 
watched him and laughed, her sweet, exciting laugh; 
a tiny gust of powder rose from her bosom into the 
air. 

“The rumor is,” whispered Jordan, “that that’s 
Tom’s girl on the telephone.”’ 

We were silent. The voice in the hall rose high 
with annoyance: ‘Very well, then, I won’t sell you 
the car at all.... I’m under no obligations to you 
at all... and as for your bothering me about it at 
lunch time, I won’t stand that at all!” 

“Holding down the receiver,” said Daisy cynically. 

‘No, he’s not,” I assured her. ‘‘It’s a bona-fide 
deal. I happen to know about it.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 139 


Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space 
for a moment with his thick body, and hurried into 
the room. 

“Mr. Gatsby!”’ He put out his broad, flat hand 
with well-concealed dislike. “I’m glad to see you, 
Seer Nick... 2.7 

“Make us a cold drink,” cried Daisy. 

As he left the room again she got up and went over 
to Gatsby and pulled his face down, kissing him on 
the mouth. 

“You know I love you,” she murmured. 

“You forget there’s a lady present,” said Jordan. 

Daisy looked around doubtfully. 

“You. kiss Nick too.” 

‘What a low, vulgar girl!” 

“YT don’t care!” cried Daisy, and began to clog 
on the brick fireplace. Then she remembered the 
heat and sat down guiltily on the couch just as a 
freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came 
into the room. 

‘“‘Bles-sed pre-cious,” she crooned, holding out 
her arms. ‘‘Come to your own mother that loves 
you.” 

The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across 
the room and rooted shyly into her mother’s dress. 

“The bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get pow- 
der on your old yellowy hair? Stand up now, and 
say—How-de-do.”’ 

Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the 


140 THE GREAT GATSBY 


small reluctant hand. Afterward he kept looking 
at the child with surprise. I don’t think he had ever 
really believed in its existence before. 

“‘T got dressed before luncheon,” said the child, 
turning eagerly to Daisy. 

‘“That’s because your mother wanted to show 
you off.” Her face bent into the single wrinkle of 
the small white neck. “You dream, you. You ab- 
solute little dream.” 

“Yes,” admitted the child calmly. ‘Aunt Jor- 
dan’s got on a white dress too.” 

“How do you like mother’s friends?” Daisy 
turned her around so that she faced Gatsby. ‘‘Do 
you think they’re pretty?” 

‘““Where’s Daddy?” 

“She doesn’t look like her father,’ explained 
Daisy. “She looks like me. She’s got my hair and 
shape of the face.” 

Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took 
a step forward and held out her hand. 

‘“Come, Pammy.” 

‘“‘Good-by, sweetheart !” 

With a reluctant backward glance the well-disci- 
plined child held to her nurse’s hand and was pulled 
out the door, just as Tom came back, preceding four 
gin rickeys that clicked full of ice. 

Gatsby took up his drink. 

“They certainly look cool,” he said, with visible 
tension. 


THE GREAT GATSBY I4I 


We drank in long, greedy swallows. 

“T read somewhere that the sun’s getting hotter 
every year,” said Tom genially. “It seems that 
pretty soon the earth’s going to fall into the sun— 
or wait a minute—it’s just the opposite—the sun’s 
getting colder every year. 

““Come outside,” he suggested to Gatsby, “‘I’d 
like you to have a look at the place.” 

IT went with them out to the veranda. On the 
green Sound, stagnant in the heat, one small sail 
crawled slowly toward the fresher sea. Gatsby’s 
eyes followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and 
pointed across the bay. 

“Y’m right across from you.” 

“So you are.” 

Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot 
lawn and the weedy refuse of the dog-days along- 
shore. Slowly the white wings of the boat moved 
against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay 
the scalloped ocean and the abounding blessed isles. 

“There’s sport for you,’ said Tom, nodding. 
“Y’d like to be out there with him for about an 
hour.” 

We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened 
too against the heat, and drank down nervous 
gayety with the cold ale. 

“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” 
cried Daisy, ‘‘and the day after that, and the next 
thirty years?” 


142 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Don’t be morbid,” Jordan said. ‘‘Life starts all 
over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” 

‘“‘But it’s so hot,” insisted Daisy, on the verge of 
tears, “‘and everything’s so confused. Let’s all go 
to town!” 

Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating 
against it, molding its senselessness into forms. 

‘“‘T’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” 
Tom was saying to Gatsby, “but I’m the first man 
who ever made a stable out of a garage.” 

‘‘Who wants to go to town?” demanded Daisy 
insistently. Gatsby’s eyes floated toward her. ‘‘ Ah,” 
she cried, “‘you look so cool.” 

Their eyes met, and they stared together at each 
other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced 
down at the table. 

‘You always look so cool,” she repeated. 

She had told him that she loved him, and 
Tom Buchanan saw. He was astounded. His mouth 
opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and then 
back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as 
some one he knew a long time ago. 

“You resemble the advertisement of the man,” 
she went on innocently. “‘You know the advertise- 
ment of the man v 

“All right,” broke in Tom quickly, “I’m perfectly 
willing to go to town. Come on—we’re all going to 
town.” 

He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby 
and his wife. No one moved. 





THE GREAT GATSBY 143 


“‘Come on!” His temper cracked a little. “‘What’s 
the matter, anyhow? If we’re going to town, let’s 
start.” 

His hand, trembling with his effort at self-control, 
bore to his lips the last of his glass of ale. Daisy’s 
voice got us to our feet and out on to the blazing 
gravel drive. 

‘Are we just going to go?” she objected. ‘Like 
this? Aren’t we going to let any one smoke a 
cigarette first ?”’ 

“Everybody smoked all through lunch.” 

“Oh, let’s have fun,” she begged him. ‘‘It’s too 
hot to fuss.”’ 

He didn’t answer. 

“Have it your own way,’ 
Jordan.” 

They went up-stairs to get ready while we three 
men stood there shuffling the hot pebbles with our 
feet. A silver curve of the moon hovered already in 
the western sky. Gatsby started to speak, changed 
his mind, but not before Tom wheeled and faced him 
expectantly. 

‘Have you got your stables here?” asked Gatsby 
with an effort. 

‘About a quarter of a mile down the road.” 

ce Oh.”’ 

A pause. 

“T don’t see the idea of going to town,” broke out 


Tom savagely. ‘Women get these notions in their 
heads———”’ 


’ she said. ‘‘Come on, 


144 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Shall we take anything to drink?” called Daisy 
from an upper window. 

“T’ll get some whiskey,” answered Tom. He went 
inside. 

Gatsby turned to me rigidly: 

“T can’t say anything in his house, old sport.” 
‘‘She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. ‘‘It’s 
full of—”’ I hesitated. | 
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. 

That was it. I’d never understood before. It was 
full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm 
that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ 
song of it... . High in a white palace the king’s 
daughter, the golden girl.... 

Tom came out of the house wrapping a quart 
bottle in a towel, followed by Daisy and Jordan 
wearing small tight hats of metallic cloth and carry- 
ing light capes over their arms. 

“Shall we all go in my car?” suggested Gatsby. 
He felt the hot, green leather of the seat. ‘I ought 
to have left it in the shade.” 

“Ts it standard shift?’? demanded Tom. 

6¢ Yes.” 

“Well, you take my coupé and let me drive your 
car to town.”’ 

The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby. 

“‘T don’t think there’s much gas,” he objected. 

‘Plenty of gas,” said Tom boisterously. He looked 
at the gauge. ‘‘ And if it runs out I can stop at a drug- 


THE GREAT GATSBY 145 


store. You can buy anything at a drug-store nowa- 
days.” 

A pause followed this apparently pointless remark. 
Daisy looked at Tom frowning, and an indefinable 
expression, at once definitely unfamiliar and vaguely 
recognizable, as if I had only heard it described in 
words, passed over Gatsby’s face. 

‘Come on, Daisy,” said Tom, pressing her with 
his hand toward Gatsby’s car. ‘‘TIl take you in this 
circus wagon.” 

He opened the door, but she moved out from the 
circle of his arm. 

“You take Nick and Jordan. We'll follow you in 
the coupé.” 

She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with 
her hand. Jordan and Tom and I got into the front 
seat of Gatsby’s car, Tom pushed the unfamiliar 
gears tentatively, and we shot off into the oppressive 
heat, leaving them out of sight behind. 

“Did you see that?” demanded Tom. 

“See what?” 

He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and 
I must have known all along. 

“You think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” he 
suggested. “‘Perhaps I am, but I have a—almost a 
second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do. 
Maybe you don’t believe that, but science——”’ 

He paused. The immediate contingency overtook 
him, pulled him back from the edge of the theoretical 
abyss. 


146 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“T’ve made a small investigation of this fellow,” 
he continued. “I could have gone deeper if I’d 
known——’ 

“Do you mean you’ve been to a medium?” in- 
quired Jordan humorously. 

“What ?’’ Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. 
“A medium?” 

‘About Gatsby.” 

‘About Gatsby! No, I haven’t. I said I’d been 
making a small investigation of his past.” 

‘“‘And you found he was an Oxford man,” said 
Jordan helpfully. 

‘An Oxford man !” He was incredulous. ‘‘Like hell 
he is! He wears a pink suit.” 

**Nevertheless he’s an Oxford man.” 

“Oxford, New Mexico,” snorted Tom conten 
tuously, “‘or something like that.” 

‘Listen, Tom. If you’re such a snob, why did you 
invite him to lunch?” demanded Jordan crossly. 

“Daisy invited him; she knew him before we 
were married—God knows where !”’ 

We were all irritable now with the fading ale, and 
aware of it we drove for a while in silence. Then 
as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s faded eyes came into 
sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby’s caution 
about gasoline. 

“We've got enough to get us to town,” said 
Tom. , 

“But there’s a garage right here,” objected Jor- 


THE GREAT GATSBY 147 


dan. ‘‘I don’t want to get stalled in this baking 
heat.” 

Tom threw on both brakes impatiently, and we 
slid to an abrupt dusty spot under Wilson’s sign. 
After a moment the proprietor emerged from the in- 
terior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at 
oie Car. 

“Let’s have some gas!” cried Tom roughly. 
‘““What do you think we stopped for—to admire the 
view?” 

elm sick, 
sick all day.” 

‘‘What’s the matter ?”’ 

“T’m all run down.” 

“Well, shall I help myself?” Tom demanded. 
‘You sounded well enough on the phone.” 

With an effort Wilson left the shade and support 
of the doorway and, breathing hard, unscrewed the 
cap of the tank. In the sunlight his face was green. 

“T didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” he said. 
“But I need money pretty bad, and I was wonder- 
ing what you were going to do with your old car.” 

‘““How do you like this one?” inquired Tom. “T 
bought it last week.” 

‘It’s a nice yellow one,”’ said Wilson, as he strained 
at the handle. | 

“Like to buy it?” 

“Big chance,’ Wilson smiled faintly. ‘‘No, but 
I could make some money on the other.” 


” said Wilson without moving. ‘‘Been 


148 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“What do you want money for, all of a sud- 
den?” 

“I’ve been here too long. I want to get away. 
My wife and I want to go West.” 

‘Your wife does,” exclaimed Tom, startled. 

“‘She’s been talking about it for ten years.” He 
rested for a moment against the pump, shading his 
eyes. ‘““And now she’s going whether she wants to or 
not. I’m going to get her away.” 

The coupé flashed by us with a flurry of dust and 
the flash of a waving hand. 

“What do I owe you?” demanded Tom harshly. 

“T just got wised up to something funny the last 
two days,” remarked Wilson. ‘‘That’s why I want 
to get away. That’s why I been bothering you about 
the car.” 

“What do I owe you?” 

“Dollar twenty.” 

The relentless beating heat was beginning to con- 
fuse me and I had a bad moment there before I 
realized that so far his suspicions hadn’t alighted on 
Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort 
of life apart from him in another world, and the 
shock had made him physically sick. I stared at 
him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel dis- 
covery less than an hour before—and it occurred to 
me that there was no difference between men, in 
intelligence or race, so profound as the difference 
between the sick and the well. Wilson was so sick 


THE GREAT GATSBY 149 


that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he 
had just got some poor girl with child. 

“Vl let you have that car,” said Tom. “‘T’ll send 
it over to-morrow afternoon.” 

That locality was always vaguely disquieting, 
even in the broad glare of afternoon, and now I 
turned my head as though I had been warned of 
something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant 
eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil, but 
I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were 
regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than 
twenty feet away. 

In one of the windows over the garage the cur- 
tains had been moved aside a little, and Myrtle 
Wilson was peering down at the car. So engrossed 
was she that she had no consciousness of being ob- 
served, and one emotion after another crept into 
her face like objects into a slowly developing pic- 
ture. Her expression was curiously familiar—it was 
an expression I had often seen on women’s faces, 
but on Myrtle Wilson’s face it seemed purposeless 
and inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide 
with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on 
Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife. 


There is no confusion like the confusion of a sim- 
ple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling 
the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, 
until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping 


150 THE GREAT GATSBY 


precipitately from his control. Instinct made him 
step on the accelerator with the double purpose of 
overtaking Daisy and leaving Wilson behind, and 
we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an hour, 
until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we 
came in sight of the easy-going blue coupé. 

“Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are 
cool,’”’ suggested Jordan. “I love New York on sum- 
mer afternoons when every one’s away. There’s 
something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all 
sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your 
hands.” 

The word “‘sensuous”’ had the effect of further dis- 
quieting Tom, but before he could invent a protest 
the coupé came to a stop, and Daisy signalled us to 
draw up alongside. 

“Where are we going?” she cried. 

“How about the movies?”’ 

“It’s so hot,” she complained. ““You go. We'll 
ride around and meet you after.” With an effort her 
wit rose faintly, ‘“We’ll meet you on some corner. 
I'll be the man smoking two cigarettes.” 

“We can’t argue about it here,’ Tom said impa- 
tiently, as a truck gave out a cursing whistle behind 
us. “‘You follow me to the south side of Central 
Park, in front of the Plaza.” 

Several times he turned his head and looked back 
for their car, and if the traffic delayed them he slowed 
up until they came into sight. I think he was afraid 


THE GREAT GATSBY I5t 


they would dart down a side street and out of his life 
forever. 

But they didn’t. And we all took the less explica- 
ble step of engaging the parlor of a suite in the Plaza 
Hotel. 

The prolonged and tumultuous argument that 
ended by herding us into that room eludes me, 
though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the 
course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp 
snake around my legs and intermittent beads of 
sweat raced cool across my back. The notion origi- 
nated with Daisy’s suggestion that we hire five bath- 
rooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more 
tangible form as ‘‘a place to have a mint julep.” 
Each of us said over and over that it was a ‘‘crazy 
idea’”’—we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and 
thought, or pretended to think, that we were being 
very funny... 

The room was large and stifling, and, though it 
was already four o’clock, opening the windows ad- 
mitted only a gust of hot shrubbery from the Park. 
Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to 
us, fixing her hair. 

“It’s a swell suite,’ whispered Jordan respect- 
fully, and every one laughed. 

“Open another window,’ commanded Daisy, 
without turning around. 

“There aren’t any more.” 

“Well, we’d better telephone for an axe——” 


152 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“The thing to do is to forget about the heat,” said 
Tom impatiently. ‘‘You make it ten times worse by 
crabbing about it.” 

He unrolled the bottle of whiskey from the towel 
and put it on the table. 

“Why not let her alone, old sport?” remarked 
Gatsby. ‘“You’re the one that wanted to come to 
town.” 

There was a moment of silence. The telephone 
book slipped from its nail and splashed to the floor, 
whereupon Jordan whispered, ‘‘Excuse me”—but 
this time no one laughed. 

“Tl pick it up,” I offered. 

‘“‘’ve got it.”” Gatsby examined the parted string, 
muttered ‘‘Hum!” in an interested way, and tossed 
the book on a chair. 

“That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?” said 
Tom sharply. 

“What is?” 

‘All this ‘old sport’ business. Where’d you pick 
that up?” 

‘““Now see here, Tom,” said Daisy, turning around 
from the mirror, “if you’re going to make personal 
remarks I won’t stay here a minute. Call up and 
order some ice for the mint julep.” 

As Tom took up the receiver the compressed 
heat exploded into sound and we were listening 
to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn’s Wedding 
March from the ballroom below. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 153 


“Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!”’ cried 
Jordan dismally. 

‘‘Still—I was married in the middle of June,” 
Daisy remembered, “Louisville in June! Somebody 
fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?” 

‘Biloxi,’ he answered shortly. 

““A man named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he 
made boxes—that’s a fact—and he was from Biloxi, 
Tennessee.” 

“They carried him into my house,” appended 
Jordan, “because we lived just two doors from the 
church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy 
told him he had to get out. The day after he left 
Daddy died.” After a moment she added. ‘‘ There 
wasn’t any connection.” 

“T used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis,” 
I remarked. 

“That was his cousin. I knew his whole family 
history before he left. He gave me an aluminum 
putter that I use to-day.” 

The music had died down as the ceremony began 
and now a long cheer floated in at the window, 
followed by intermittent cries of “ Yea—ea—ea!”’ 
and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing be- 
gan. 

“We're getting old,” said Daisy. “lf we were 
young we’d rise and dance.” 

‘Remember Biloxi,” Jordan warned her. ‘‘ Where’d 
you know him, Tom?” 


154 THE GREAT GATSBY 


‘Biloxi?’ He concentrated with an effort. “I 
didn’t know him. He was a friend of Daisy’s.” 

“He was not,” she denied. ‘I’d never seen him 
before. He came down in the private car.”’ 

‘“‘Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised 
in Louisville. Asa Bird brought him around at the 
last minute and asked if we had room for him.” 

Jordan smiled. 

“He was probably bumming his way home. He 
told me he was president of your class at Yale.” 

Tom and I looked at each other blankly. 

ep iloxir 

“First place, we didn’t have any president——” 

Gatsby’s foot beat a short, restless tattoo and 
Tom eyed him suddenly. 

“By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you’re an 
Oxford man.” 

“Not exactly.” 

‘Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford.” 

““Yes—I went there.”’ 

A pause. Then Tom’s voice, incredulous and in- 
sulting: 

“You must have gone there about the time Biloxi 
went to New Haven.” 

Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in 
with crushed mint and ice but the silence was un- 
broken by his “thank you”’ and the soft closing of 
the door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared 
up at last. a 


THE GREAT GATSBY 155 


“T told you I went there,” said Gatsby. 

“T heard you, but I’d like to know when.” 

“Tt was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five 
months. That’s why I can’t really call myself an 
Oxford man.” 

Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his un- 
belief. But we were all looking at Gatsby. 

“It was an opportunity they gave to some of 
the officers after the armistice,”’ he continued. ‘‘We 
could go to any of the universities in England or 
France.” 

I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I 
had one of those renewals of complete faith in him 
that I’d experienced before. 

Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table. 

“Open the whiskey, Tom,’ she ordered, ‘‘and I'll 
make you a mint julep. Then you won’t seem so 
stupid to yourself. . . . Look at the mint!” 

“Wait a minute,’ snapped Tom, ‘“‘I want to ask 
Mr. Gatsby one more question.” 

“Go on,” Gatsby said politely. 

“What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my 
house anyhow ?”’ 

They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was 
content. 

“He isn’t causing a row,” Daisy looked desperately 
from one to the other. “You’re causing a row. 
Please have a little self-control.”’ 

‘*Self-control!”? repeated Tom incredulously. “T 


156 THE GREAT GATSBY 


suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. 
Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. 
Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out... . 
Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life 
and family institutions, and next they’ll throw every- 
thing overboard and have intermarriage between 
black and white.” 3 

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw 
himself standing alone on the last barrier of civiliza- 
tion. 

‘“‘We’re all white here,’’ murmured Jordan. 

“T know I’m not very popular. I don’t give big 
parties. I suppose you’ve got to make your house 
into a pigsty in order to have any friends—in the 
modern world.” 

Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted 
to laugh whenever he opened his mouth. The transi- 
tion from libertine to prig was so complete. 

“T’ve got something to tell you, old sport—”’ began 
Gatsby. But Daisy guessed at his intention. 

‘‘Please don’t !”’ she interrupted helplessly. “‘ Please 
let’s all go home. Why don’t we all go home?” 

“That’s a good idea.” I got up. ‘Come on, Tom. 
Nobody wants a drink.” 

““T want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me.” 

‘Your wife doesn’t love you,” said Gatsby. ‘‘She’s 
never loved you. She loves me.” 

“You must be crazy!” exclaimed iTom_auto- 
matically. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 57 


Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement. 

“She never loved you, do you hear?”’’ he cried. 
“She only married you because I was poor and she 
was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, 
but in her heart she never loved any one except 
me!” 

At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom 
and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that 
we remain—as though neither of them had anything 
to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake 
vicariously of their emotions. 

“Sit down, Daisy,’ Tom’s voice groped unsuc- 
cessfully for the paternal note. “‘What’s been going 
on? I want to hear all about it.” 

“TI told you what’s been going on,” said Gatsby. 
‘Going on for five years—and you didn’t know.” 

Tom turned to Daisy sharply. 

“‘You’ve been seeing this fellow for five years?” 

“Not seeing,” said Gatsby. ““No, we couldn’t 
meet. But both of us loved each other all that time, 
old sport, and you didn’t know. I used to laugh 
sometimes’’—but there was no laughter in his eyes 
—‘to think that you didn’t know.” 

‘“‘Oh—that’s all.” Tom tapped his thick fingers 
together like a clergyman and leaned back in his 
chair. 

“You’re crazy!” he exploded. “I can’t speak 
about what happened five years ago, because I didn’t 
know Daisy then—and I’ll be damned if I see how 


158 THE GREAT GATSBY 


you got within a mile of her unless you brought the 
groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s 
a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married 
me and she loves me now.” 

“No,” said Gatsby, shaking his head. 

‘She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes 
she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn’t know 
what she’s doing.” He nodded sagely. “‘ And what’s 
more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on 
a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come 
back, and in my heart I love her all the time.” 

‘““Youw’re revolting,” said Daisy. She turned to me, 
and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the 
room with thrilling scorn: “Do you know why we 
left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat 
you to the story of that little spree.” 

Gatsby walked over and stood beside her. 

“Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. 
“It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the 
truth—that you never loved him—and it’s all wiped 
out forever.” 

She looked at him blindly. ‘‘Why—how could I 
love him—possibly ?”’ 

“You never loved him.” 

She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with 
a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what 
she was doing—and as though she had never, all 
along, intended doing anything at all. But it was 
done now. It was too late. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 159 


) 


“T never loved him,” she said, with perceptible 
reluctance. 

“Not at Kapiolani?’”’ demanded Tom suddenly. 

ce No.” 

From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffo- 
cating chords were drifting up on hot waves of 
air. 

‘“‘Not that day I carried you down from the Punch 
Bowl to keep your shoes dry?”’ There was a husky 
tenderness in his tone. . . . “ Daisy?” 

‘“‘Please don’t.”? Her voice was cold, but the ran- 
cor was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. “‘ There, 
Jay,” she said—but her hand as she tried to light a 
cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the 
cigarette and the burning match on the carpet. 

“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. 
““T love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help 
what’s past.’ She began to sob helplessly. “I did 
love him once—but I loved you too.” 

Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed. 

“You loved me foo?”’ he repeated. 

“Even that’s a lie,” said Tom savagely. “‘She 
didn’t know you were alive. Why—there’re things 
between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things 
that neither of us can ever forget.” 

The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby. 

“IT want to speak to Daisy alone,” he insisted. 
“She’s all excited now——’” 

“Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,” 


160 THE GREAT GATSBY 


she admitted in a pitiful voice. “It wouldn’t be 
true.” 

“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Tom. 

She turned to her husband. 

‘As if it mattered to you,’ she said. 

“Of course it matters. I’m going to take better 
care of you from now on.” 

“You don’t understand,” said Gatsby, with a 
touch of panic. “‘ You’re not going to take care of her 
any more.” 

“Tm not?” Tom opened his eyes wide and 
laughed. He could afford to control himself now. 
“Why’s that?” 

‘“Daisy’s leaving you.” 

‘‘' Nonsense.” 

“T am, though,” she said with a visible effort. 

““She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly 
leaned down over Gatsby. “‘Certainly not for a com- 
mon swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on 
her finger.”’ 

“T won’t stand this!” cried Daisy. ‘Oh, please 

let’s get out.” 
“Who are you, anyhow?” broke out Tom. “You're 
one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer 
Wolfshiem—that much I happen to know. I’ve 
made a little investigation into your affairs—and Ill 
carry it further to-morrow.” 

“You can suit yourself about that, old sport.” said 
Gatsby steadily. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 161 


“T found out what your ‘drug-stores’ were.” He 
turned to us and spoke rapidly. “He and this Wolfs- 
hiem bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here 
and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the 
counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked 
him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I 
wasn’t far wrong.” 

‘What about it?” said Gatsby politely. “TI guess 
your friend Walter Chase wasn’t too proud to come 
in on it.” 

“And you left him in the lurch, didn’t you? You 
let him go to jail for a month over in New Jersey. 
God! You ought to hear Walter on the subject of 
you.” 

‘“‘He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to 
pick up some money, old sport.” 

“Don’t you call me ‘old sport’!” cried Tom. 
Gatsby said nothing. “Walter could have you up on 
the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared him into 
shutting his mouth.” 

That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back 
again in Gatsby’s face. 

“That drug-store business was just small change,” 
continued Tom slowly, “but you’ve got something 
on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me about.” 

I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified be- 
tween Gatsby and her husband, and at Jordan, who 
had begun to balance an invisible but absorbing 
object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to 


162 THE GREAT GATSBY 


Gatsby—and was startled at his expression. He 
looked—and this is said in all contempt for the bab- 
bled slander of his garden—as if he had “killed a 
man.” For a moment the set of his face could be 
described in just that fantastic way. 

It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, 
denying everything, defending his name against 
accusations that had not been made. But with every 
word she was drawing further and further into her- 
self, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream 
fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to 
touch what was no longer tangible, struggling un- 
happily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice 
across the room. 

The voice begged again to go. 

“Please, Tom! I can’t stand this any more.” 

Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, 
whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone. 

“You two start on home, Daisy,” said Tom. ‘In 
Mr. Gatsby’s car.” 

She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted 
with magnanimous scorn. 

‘Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he realizes 
that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.” 

They were gone, without a word, snapped out, 
made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our 
pity. 

After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping 
the unopened bottle of whiskey in the towel. 

“Want any of this stuff? Jordan? ... Nick?” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 163 


I didn’t answer. 

“Nick?” He asked again. 

ce What?” 

“Want any?” 

“No ... 1 just remembered that to-day’s my 
birthday.” 

I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, 
menacing road of a new decade. 

It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupé 
with him and started for Long Island. Tom talked 
incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was 
as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamor 
on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated over- 
head. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were 
content to let all their tragic arguments fade with 
the city lights behind. Thirty—the promise of a 
decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to 
know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning 
hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike 
Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten 
dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark 
bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s 
shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died 
away with the reassuring pressure of her hand. 

So we drove on toward death through the cooling 
twilight. 


The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee 
joint beside the ashheaps was the principal witness 
at the inquest.. He had slept through the heat until 


164 THE GREAT GATSBY 


after five, when he strolled over to the garage, and 
found George Wilson sick in his office—really sick, 
pale as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Mich- 
aelis advised him to go to bed, but Wilson refused, 
saying that he’d miss a lot of business if he did. While 
his neighbor was trying to persuade him a violent 
racket broke out overhead. 

“ve got my wife locked in up there,” explained 
Wilson calmly. ‘“‘She’s going to stay there till the 
day after to-morrow, and then we’re going to move 
away.” 

Michaelis was astonished; they had been neigh- 
bors for four years, and Wilson had never seemed 
faintly capable of such a statement. Generally he 
was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn’t 
working, he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared 
at the people and the cars that passed along the 
road. When any one spoke to him he invariably 
laughed in an agreeable, colorless way. He was his 
wife’s man and not his own. 

So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had 
happened, but Wilson wouldn’t say a word—instead 
he began to throw curious, suspicious glances at his 
visitor and ask him what he’d been doing at cer- 
tain times on certain days. Just as the latter was 
getting uneasy, some workmen came past the door 
bound for his restaurant, and Michaelis took the op- 
portunity to get away, intending to come back later. 
But he didn’t. He supposed he forgot to, that’s all. 
When he came outside again, a little after seven, he 


THE GREAT GATSBY 165 


was reminded of the conversation because he heard 
Mrs. Wilson’s voice, loud and scolding, down- stairs 
in the garage. 

“Beat me!” he heard her cry. ‘‘Throw me down 
and beat me, you dirty little coward!” 

A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, 
waving her hands and shouting—before he could 
move from his door the business was over. 

The “death car” as the newspapers called it, 
didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, 
wavered tragically for a moment, and then disap- 
peared around the next bend. Mavromichaelis 
wasn’t even sure of its color—he told the first police- 
man that it was light green. The other car, the one 
going toward New York, came to rest a hundred 
yards beyond, and it’s driver hurried back to where 
Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt 
in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with 
the dust. 

Michaelis and this man reached her first, but 
when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp 
with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was 
swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to 
listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide 
open and ripped a little at the corners, as though 
she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous 
vitality she had stored so long. 


We saw the three or four automobiles and the 
crowd when we were still some distance away 


166 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Wreck!” said Tom. ‘‘That’s good. Wilson’ll 
have a little business at last.” 

He slowed down, but still without any intention 
of stopping, until, as we came nearer, the hushed, 
intent faces of the people at the garage door made 
him automatically put on the brakes. 

“We'll take a look,” he said doubtfully, “‘just a 


Pylook. 


I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound 
which issued incessantly from the garage, a sound 
which as we got out of the coupé and walked toward 
the door resolved itself into the words ‘Oh, my 
God!” uttered over and over in a gasping moan. 

‘““There’s some bad trouble here,” said Tom ex- 
citedly. 

He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle 
of heads into the garage, which was lit only by a 
yellow light in a swinging metal basket overhead. 
Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and with 
a violent thrusting movement of his powerful arms 
pushed his way through. 

The circle closed up again with a running murmur 
of expostulation; it was a minute before I could see 
anything at all. Then new arrivals deranged the 
line, and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly in- 
side. 

Myrtle Wilson’s body, wrapped in a blanket, and 
then in another blanket, as though she suffered from 
a chill in the hot night, lay on a work-table by the 


THE GREAT GATSBY 167 


wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending 
over it, motionless. Next to him stood a motor- 
cycle policeman taking down names with much 
sweat and correction in a little book. At first I 
couldn’t find the source of the high, groaning words 
that echoed clamorously through the bare garage— 
then I saw Wilson standing on the raised threshold 
of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to 
the doorposts with both hands. Some man was 
talking to him in a low voice and attempting, from 
time to time, to lay a hand on his shoulder, but 
Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop 
slowly from the swinging light to the laden table by 
the wall, and then jerk back to the light again, and 
he gave out incessantly his high, horrible call: 

“Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, 
my Ga-od !” 

Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, 
after staring around the garage with glazed eyes, 
addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to the 





policeman. 
‘“‘M-a-v—”’ the policeman was saying, “‘—o i 
“No, r—”’ corrected the man, ‘‘ M-a-v-r-o——”’ 


“Listen to me!” muttered Tom fiercely. 
“‘y—” said the policeman, ‘‘o——” 
9 99 
& 
‘o>’? He looked up as Tom’s broad hand fell 
sharply on his shoulder. ‘‘What you want, fella?” 
“What happened ?—that’s what I want to know.” 





168 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed.” 

“Instantly killed,” repeated Tom, staring. 

‘She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even 
stopus car.” 

“There was two cars,’ said Michaelis, ‘‘one 
comin’, one goin’, see?”’ 

“Going where?” asked the policeman keenly. 

“One goin’ each way. Well, she’—his hand 
rose toward the blankets but stopped half way and 
fell to his side—‘‘she ran out there an’ the one 
comin’ from N’York knock right into her, goin’ 
thirty or forty miles an hour.” 

““What’s the name of this place here?’”’ demanded 
the officer. 

“Hasn’t got any name.” 

A pale well-dressed negro stepped near. 

“It was a yellow car,” he said, “‘big yellow car. 
New.” 

‘See the accident?” asked the policeman. 

“No, but the car passed me down the road, going 
faster’n forty. Going fifty, sixty.” 

““Come here and let’s have your name. Look out 
now. I want to get his name.” 

Some words of this conversation must have reached 
Wilson, swaying in the office door, for suddenly a 
new theme found voice among his gasping cries: 

“You don’t have to tell me what kind of car it 
was! I know what kind of car it was!” 

Watching Tom, I saw the wad of muscle back of 


THE GREAT GATSBY 169 


his shoulder tighten under his coat. He walked 
quickly over to Wilson and, standing in front of 
him seized him, firmly by the upper arms. 

“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he said 
with soothing gruffness. 

Wilson’s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his 
tiptoes and then would have collapsed to his knees 

had not Tom held him upright. 
 “Tisten,” said Tom, shaking him a little. “TI just 
got here a minute ago, from New York. I was 
bringing you that coupé we’ve been talking about. 
That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn’t 
mine—do you hear? I haven’t seen it all after- 
noon.” 

Only the negro and I were near enough to hear 
what he said, but the policeman caught something 
in the tone and looked over with truculent eyes. 

““What’s all that?”’ he demanded. 

“Y’m a friend of his.” Tom turned his head but 
kept his hands firm on Wilson’s body. “He says 
he knows the car that did it.... It was a yellow 
car,” 

Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look 
suspiciously at Tom. 

‘And what color’s your car?” 

“It’s a blue car, a coupé.” 

“We've come straight from New York,” I said. 

Some one who had been driving a little behind us 
confirmed this, and the policeman turned away. 


170 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Now, if you'll let me have that name again cor- 
rec ¢ 

Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him 
into the office, set him down in a chair, and came 
back. 

“Tf somebody’ll come here and sit with him,” he 
snapped authoritatively. He watched while the two 
men standing closest glanced at each other and went 
unwillingly into the room. Then Tom shut the door 
on them and came down the single step, his eyes 
avoiding the table. As he passed close to me he 
whispered: ‘‘Let’s get out.” 

Self-consciously, with his authoritative arms break- 
ing the way, we pushed through the still gathering 
crowd, passing a hurried doctor, case in hand, who 
had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago. 

Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend 
—then his foot came down hard, and the coupé 
raced along through the night. In a little while I 
heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were 
overflowing down his face. 

‘The God damned coward !”’ he whimpered. “He 
didn’t even stop his car.” 





The Buchanans’ house floated suddenly toward us 
through the dark rustling trees. Tom stopped be- 
side the porch and looked up at the second floor, 
where two windows bloomed with light among the 
vines. 


THE GREAT GATSBY Lk 


“Daisy’s home,” he said. As we got out of the 
car he glanced at me and frowned slightly. 

“T ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. 
There’s nothing we can do to-night.” 

A change had come over him, and he spoke 
gravely, and with decision. As we walked across 
the moonlight gravel to the porch he disposed of the 
situation in a few brisk phrases. 

“Tl telephone for a taxi to take you home, and 
while you’re waiting you and Jordan better go in 
the kitchen and have them get you some supper— 
if you want any.’’ He opened the door. ‘‘Come 
inv’ 

“No, thanks. But I’d be glad if you’d order me 
the taxi. Ill wait outside.” 

Jordan put her hand on my arm. 

“Won’t you come in, Nick?” 

“No, thanks.” 

I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. 
But Jordan lingered for a moment more. 

“It’s only half-past nine,”’ she said. 

I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’'d had enough of all 
of them for one day, and suddenly that included 
Jordan too. She must have seen something of this 
in my expression, for she turned abruptly away and 
ran up the porch steps into the house. I sat down 
for a few minutes with my head in my hands, until 
I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler’s 
voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the 


ae THE GREAT GATSBY 


drive away from the house, intending to wait by the 
gate. 

I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my 
name and Gatsby stepped from between two bushes 
into the path. I must have felt pretty weird by 
that time, because I could think of nothing except 
the luminosity of his pink suit under the moon. 

‘‘What are you doing?” I inquired. 

‘Just standing here, old sport.” 

Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. 
For all I knew he was going to rob the house in a 
moment; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see sinis- 
ter faces, the faces of “‘Wolfshiem’s people,” behind 
him in the dark shrubbery. 

‘“‘Did you see any trouble on the road?” he asked 
after a minute. 

ce Yes.”’ 

He hesitated. 

“Was she killed?” 

ée Yes.” 

“T thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s 
better that the shock should all come at once. She 
stood it pretty well.” 

He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing 
that mattered. 

“T got to West Egg by a side road,” he went on, 
‘Cand left the car in my garage. I don’t think any- 
body saw us, but of course I can’t be sure.” 

I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t 
find it necessary to tell him he was wrong. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 173 


“Who was the woman?” he inquired. 

“Her name was Wilson. Her husband owns the 
garage. How the devil did it happen?” 

“Well, I tried to swing the wheel—” He broke 
off, and suddenly I guessed at the truth. 

‘Was Daisy driving?” 

“Yes,” he said after a moment, ‘‘but of course 
V’ll say I was. You see, when we left New York she 
was very nervous and she thought it would steady 
her to drive—and this woman rushed out at us just 
as we were passing a car coming the other way. It 
all happened in a minute, but it seemed to me that 
she wanted to speak to us, thought we were some- 
body she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from 
the woman toward the other car, and then she lost 
her nerve and turned back. The second my hand 
reached the wheel I felt the shock—it must have 
killed her instantly.” 

“It ripned her open 

“Don’t tell me, old sport.”’ He winced. “ Any- 
how—Daisy stepped on it. I tried to make her stop, 
but she couldn’t, so I pulled on the emergency brake. 
Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on. 

“She'll be all right to-morrow,” he said presently. 
“T’m just going to wait here and see if he tries to 
bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon. 
She’s locked herself into her room, and if he tries any 
brutality she’s going to turn the light out and on 


Saai\ D 


again 


9? 





174 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“He won’t touch her,” I said. “‘He’s not thinking 
about her.” 

“T don’t trust him, old sport.” 

“How long are you going to wait?” 

“All night, if necessary. Anyhow, till they all go 
to bed.” 

A new point of view occurred tome. Suppose Tom 
found out that Daisy had been driving. He might 
think he saw a connection in it—he might think any- 
thing. I looked at the house; there were two or three 
bright windows down-stairs and the pink glow from 
Daisy’s room on the second floor. 

“You wait here,” I said. “I'll see if there’s any 
sign of a commotion.” 

I walked back along the border of the lawn, tra- 
versed the gravel softly, and tiptoed up the veranda 
steps. The drawing-room curtains were open, and I 
saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch 
where we had dined that June night three months 
before, I came to a small rectangle of light which I 
guessed was the pantry window. The blind was 
drawn, but I found a rift at the sill. 

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other 
at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried 
chicken between them, and two bottles of ale. He 
was talking intently across the table at her, and in 
his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and cov- 
ered her own. Once in a while she looked up at 
him and nodded in agreement. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 175 


They weren’t happy, and neither of them had 
touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren’t 
unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of 
natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody 
would have said that they were conspiring together. 

As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feel- 
ing its way along the dark road toward the house. 
Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in the 
drive. 

“Ts it all quiet up there?” he asked anxiously. 

“Yes, it’s all quiet.’ I hesitated. ‘‘You’d better 
come home and get some sleep.” 

He shook his head. 

“T want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good 
night, old sport.” 

He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned 
back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though 
my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So 
I walked away and left him standing there in the 
moonlight—watching over nothing. 


CHAPTER VIII 


I couLpn’T sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning 
incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick 
between grotesque reality and savage, frightening 
dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gats- 
by’s drive, and immediately I jumped out of bed 
and began to dress—I felt that I had something to 
tell him, something to warn him about, and morn- 
ing would be too late. 

Crossing his lawn, I saw that his front door was 
still open and he was leaning against a table in the 
hall, heavy with dejection or sleep. 

‘Nothing happened,” he said wanly. “I waited, 
and about four o’clock she came to the window and 
stood there for a minute and then turned out the 
light.” 

His house had never seerned so enormous to me 
as it did that night when we hunted through the 
great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside cur- 
tains that were like pavilions, and felt over innu- 
merable feet of dark wall for electric light switches— 
once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys 
of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount 
of dust everywhere, and the rooms were musty, as 
though they hadn’t been aired for many days. I 


found the humidor on an unfamiliar table, with two 
176 


THE GREAT GATSBY 177 


stale, dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the 
French windows of the drawing-room, we sat smok- 
ing out into the darkness. 

“You ought to go oe I said. “Its p pretty cer- 
tain they’ll trace your car.’ 

“Go away now, old sport?” 

“Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Mon- 
treal.”’ 

He wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t possibly 
leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to 
do. He was clutching at some last hope and I 
couldn’t bear to shake him free. 

It was this night that he told me the strange story 
of his youth with Dan Cody—told it to me because 
“Tay Gatsby’ had broken up like glass against Tom’s 
hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was 
played out. I think that he would have acknowl- 
edged anything now, without reserve, but he wanted 
to talk about Daisy. 

She was the first “‘nice” girl he had ever known. 
In various unrevealed capacities he had come in 
contact with such people, but always with indis- 
cernible barbed wire between. He found her excit- 
ingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with 
other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It 
amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful 
house before. But what gave it an air of breathless 
intensity, was that Daisy lived there—it was as 
casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to 


178 THE GREAT GATSBY 


him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of 
bedrooms up-stairs more beautiful and cool than 
other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking 
place through its corridors, and of romances that 
were not musty and laid away already in lavender 
but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s 
shining motor-cars and of dances whose flowers were 
scarcely withered. It excited him, too, that many 
men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value 
in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the 
house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes 
of still vibrant emotions. 

But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a 
colossal accident. However glorious might be his 
future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless 
young man without a past, and at any moment 
the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from 
his shoulders. So he made the most of his time. He 
took what he could get, ravenously and unscru- 
pulously—eventually he took Daisy one still October 
night, took her because he had no real right to 
touch her hand. 

He might have despised himself, for he had 
certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don’t 
mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, 
but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of se- 
curity; he let her believe that he was a person from 
much the same strata as herself—that he was fully 
able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had 


THE GREAT GATSBY 179 


no such facilities—he had no comfortable family 
standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim 
of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere 
about the world. 

But he didn’t despise himself and it didn’t turn out 
as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to 
take what he could and go—but now he found that 
he had committed himself to the following of a 
grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but 
he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” 
girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into 
her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt 
married to her, that was all. 

When they met again, two days later, it was 
Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, be- 
trayed. Her porch was bright with the bought 
luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked 
fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed 
her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a 
cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charm- 
ing than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly 
aware of the youth and mystery that wealth im- 
prisons and preserves, of the freshness of many 
clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and 
proud above the hot struggles of the poor. 


“T can’t describe to you how surprised I was to 
find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for 
a while that she’d throw me over, but she didn’t, be- 


180 THE GREAT GATSBY 


cause she was in love with me too. She thought I 
knew a lot because I knew different things from her 
.. . Well, there I was, way off my ambitions, getting 
deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I 
didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things 
if I could have a better time telling her what I was 
going to do?” 

On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he 
sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It 
was a cold fall day, with fire in the room and her 
cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he 
changed his arm a little, and once he kissed her dark 
shining hair. The afternoon had made them tran- 
quil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for 
the long parting the next day promised. They had 
never been closer in their month of love, nor com- 
municated more profoundly one with another, than 
when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoul- 
der or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, 
as though she were asleep. 


He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a 
captain before he went to the front, and following the 
Argonne battles he got his majority and the com- 
mand of the divisional machine-guns. After the ar- 
mistice he tried frantically to get home, but some 
complication or misunderstanding sent him to Ox- 
ford instead. He was worried now—there was a 
quality of nervous despair in Daisy’s letters. She 


THE GREAT GATSBY 181 


didn’t see why he couldn’t come. She was feeling 
the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted 
to see him and feel his presence beside her and be 
reassured that she was doing the right thing after all. 

For Daisy was young and her artificial world was 
redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery 
and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, 
summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life 
in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the 
hopeless comment of the “Beale Street Blues” while 
a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled 
the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were 
always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this 
low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and 
there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around 
the floor. 

Through this twilight universe Daisy began to 
move again with the season; suddenly she was 
again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a 
dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the 
beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among 
dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all 
the time something within her was crying for a de- 
cision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately 
—and the decision must be made by some force—of 
love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that 
was close at hand. 

That force took shape in the middle of spring with 
the arrival of Tom Buchanan. There was a whole- 


182 THE GREAT GATSBY 


some bulkiness about his person and his position, 
and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a cer- 
tain struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached 
Gatsby while he was still at Oxford. 


It was dawn now on Long Island and we went 
about opening the rest of the windows down-stairs, 
filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning 
light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the 
dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue 
leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in 
the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day. 

‘T don’t think she ever loved him.”’ Gatsby turned 
around from a window and looked at me challeng- 
ingly. ‘‘ You must remember, old sport, she was very 
excited this afternoon. He told her those things in 
a way that frightened her—that made it look as if 
I was some kind of cheap sharper. And the result 
was she hardly knew what she was saying.” 

He sat down gloomily. 

“Of course she might have loved him just for a 
minute, when they were first married—and loved me 
more even then, do you see?”’ 

Suddenly he came out with a curious remark. 

“In any case,” he said, “it was just personal.” 

What could you make of that, except to suspect 
some intensity in his conception of the affair that 
couldn’t be measured? 

He came back from France when Tom and Daisy 


THE GREAT GATSBY 183 


were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable 
but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of 
his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the 
streets where their footsteps had clicked together 
through the November night and revisiting the out- 
of-the-way places to which they had driven in her 
white car. Just as Daisy’s house had always seemed 
to him more mysterious and gay than other houses, 
so his idea of the city itself, even though she was 
gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty. 

He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he 
might have found her—that he was leaving her be- 
hind. The day-coach—he was penniless now—was 
hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down 
on a folding-chair, and the station slid away and the 
backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by. Then out 
into the spring fields, where a yellow trolley raced 
them for a minute with people in it who might once 
have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual 
Street. 

The track curved and now it was going away from 
the sun, which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread 
itself in benediction over the vanishing city where 
she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his 
hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, 
to save a fragment of the spot that she had made 
lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now 
for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost 
that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever. 


184 THE GREAT GATSBY 


It was nine o’clock when we finished breakfast 
and went out on the porch. The night had made a 
sharp difference in the weather and there was an 
autumn flavor in the air. The gardener, the last one 
of Gatsby’s former servants, came to the foot of the 
steps. 

“Ym going to drain the pool to-day, Mr. Gatsby. 
Leaves’ll start falling pretty soon, and then there’s 
always trouble with the pipes.” 

“Don’t do it to-day,” Gatsby answered. He 
turned to me apologetically. ‘““You know, old sport, 
I’ve never used that pool all summer ?”’ 

I looked at my watch and stood up. 

“Twelve minutes to my train,” 

I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a 
decent stroke of work, but it was more than that— 
I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train, 
and then another, before I could get myself away. 

“Tl call you up,” I said finally. 

“Do, old sport.” 

“T’ll call you about noon.” 

We walked slowly down the steps. 

“T suppose Daisy’ll call too.’’ He looked at me 
anxiously, as if he hoped I’d corroborate this. 

‘‘T suppose so.” 

“Well, good-by.” 

We shook hands and I Bare away. Just before 
I reached the hedge I remembered something and 
turned around. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 185 


“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the 
lawn. ““You’re worth the whole damn bunch put 
together.” 

I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only 
compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved 
of him from beginning to end. First he nodded 
politely, and then his face broke into that radiant 
and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic 
cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink 
rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the 
white steps, and I thought of the night when I first 
came to his ancestral home, three months before. 
The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces 
of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had 
stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible 
dream, as he waved them good-by. 

I thanked him for his hospitality. We were al- 
ways thanking him for that—I and the others. 

“Good-by,” I called. “I enjoyed breakfast, 
Gatsby.” 


Up in the city, I tried for a while to list the quo- 
tations on an interminable amount of stock, then 
I fell asleep in my swivel-chair. Just before noon 
the phone woke me, and I started up with sweat 
breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; 
she often called me up at this hour because the un- 
certainty of her own movements between hotels 
and clubs and private houses made her hard to find. 


186 THE GREAT GATSBY 


in any other way. Usually her voice came over the 
wire as something fresh and cool, as if a divot from 
a green golf-links had come sailing in at the office 
window, but this morning it seemed harsh and dry. 

“T’ve left Daisy’s house,’ she said. “I’m at 
Hempstead, and I’m going down to Southampton 
this afternoon.” 

Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy’s house, 
but the act annoyed me, and her next remark made 
me rigid. 

‘““Vou weren’t so nice to me last night.” 

‘How could it have mattered then?” 

Silence for a moment. Then: 

‘“‘However—I want to see you.” 

“‘T want to see you, too.” 

‘Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come 
into town this afternoon?” 

‘““No—I don’t think this afternoon.” 

“Very well.” 

“Tt’s impossible this afternoon. Various 

We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly 
we weren’t talking any longer. I don’t know which 
of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn’t 
care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea- 
table that day if I never talked to her again in this 
world. 

I called Gatsby’s house a few minutes later, but 
the line was busy. I tried four times; finally an ex- 
asperated central told me the wire was being kept 


9 





THE GREAT GATSBY 187 


open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out 
my time-table, I drew a small circle around the 
three-fifty train. Then I leaned back in my chair 
and tried to think. It was just noon. 


When I passed the ashheaps on the train that 
morning I had crossed deliberately to the other side 
of the car. I supposed there’d be a curious crowd 
around there all day with little boys searching for 
dark spots in the dust, and some garrulous man tell- 
ing over and over what had happened, until it be- 
came less and less real even to him and he could 
tell it no longer, and Myrtle Wilson’s tragic achieve- 
ment was forgotten. Now I want to go back a 
little and tell what happened at the garage after 
we left there the night before. 

They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. 
She must have broken her rule against drinking that 
night, for when she arrived she was stupid with 
liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance 
had already gone to Flushing. When they convinced 
her of this, she immediately fainted, as if that was 
the intolerable part of the affair. Some one, kind or 
curious, took her in his car and drove her in the 
wake of her sister’s body. 

Until long after midnight a changing crowd lapped 
up against the front of the garage, while George Wil- 
son rocked himself back and forth on the couch in- 
side. For a while the door of the office was open, and 


188 THE GREAT GATSBY 


every one who came into the garage glanced irresis- 
tibly through it. Finally some one said it was a 
shame, and closed the door. Michaelis and several 
other men were with him; first, four or five men, 
later two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to 
ask the last stranger to wait there fifteen minutes 
longer, while he went back to his own place and 
made a pot of coffee. After that, he stayed there 
alone with Wilson until dawn. 

About three o’clock the quality of Wilson’s inco- 
herent muttering changed—he grew quieter and 
began to talk about the yellow car. He announced 
that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow car 
belonged to, and then he blurted out that a couple of 
months ago his wife had come from the city with her 
face bruised and her nose swollen. 

But when he heard himself say this, he flinched 
and began to cry “Oh, my God!” again in his groan- 
ing voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt to dis- 
tract him. 

“How long have you been married, George? 
Come on there, try and sit still a minute and answer 
my question. How long have you been married?” 

“Twelve years.” 

“Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit 
still—I asked you a question. Did you ever have 
any children?” 

The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the 
dull light, and whenever Michaelis heard a car go 


THE GREAT GATSBY 189 


tearing along the road outside it sounded to him like 
the car that hadn’t stopped a few hours before. He 
didn’t like to go into the garage, because the work 
bench was stained where the body had been lying, 
so he moved uncomfortably around the office—he 
knew every object in it before morning—and from 
time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep 
him more quiet. 

“Have you got a church you go to sometimes, 
George? Maybe even if you haven’t been there for 
a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and 
get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, 
see?” 

“Don’t belong to any.” 

‘You ought to have a church, George, for times 
like this. You must have gone to church once. 
Didn’t you get married inachurch? Listen, George, 
listen to me. Didn’t you get married in a church?” 

“That was a long time ago.” 

The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his 
rocking—for a moment he was silent. Then the 
same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came back 
into his faded eyes. 

“Look in the drawer there,” he said, pointing at 
the desk. 

“Which drawer ?”’ 

“That drawer—that one.” 

Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. 
There was nothing in it but a small, expensive dog- 


Igo THE GREAT GATSBY 


leash, made of leather and braided silver. It was 
apparently new. 

“This?” he inquired, holding it up. 

Wilson stared and nodded. 

“T found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell 
me about it, but I knew it was something funny.” 

“You mean your wife bought it?” 

“She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her 
bureau.” 

Michaelis didn’t see anything odd in that, and he 
gave Wilson a dozen reasons why his wife might 
have bought the dog-leash. But conceivably Wilson 
had heard some of these same explanations before, 
from Myrtle, because he began saying “Oh, my 
God!” again in a whisper—his comforter left several 
explanations in the air. 

“Then he killed her,” said Wilson. His mouth 
dropped open suddenly. 

‘Who did?” 

““T have a way of finding out.” 

‘““You’re morbid, George,” said his friend. ‘‘ This 
has been a strain to you and you don’t know what 
you’re saying. You’d better try and sit quiet till 
morning.” 

‘He murdered her.” 

“It was an accident, George.” 

Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and 
his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a su- 
perior “Hm !” 


THE GREAT GATSBY IQl 


“TI know,” he said definitely, “I’m one of these 
trusting fellas and I don’t think any harm to nobody, 
but when I get to know a thing I know it. It was 
the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him 
and he wouldn’t stop.” 

Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn’t occurred 
to him that there was any special significance in it. 
He believed that Mrs. Wilson had been running 
away from her husband, rather than trying to stop 
any particular car. 

‘How could she of been like that?” 

‘*She’s a deep one,” said Wilson, as if that an- 
swered the question. ‘‘ Ah-h-h ay 

He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood 
twisting the leash in his hand. 

‘““Maybe you got some friend that I could tele- 
phone for, George?” 

This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that 
Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him 
for his wife. He was glad a little later when he no- 
ticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by 
the window, and realized that dawn wasn’t far off. 
About five o’clock it was blue enough outside to 
snap off the light. 

Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, 
where small gray clouds took on fantastic shapes 
and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. 

“T spoke to her,”’ he muttered, after a long silence. 
“TI told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool 





192 THE GREAT GATSBY 


God. I took her to the window”—with an effort he 
got up and walked to the rear window and leaned 
with his face pressed against it—‘‘and I said ‘God 
knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve 
been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool 
God!” 

Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a 
shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. 
J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and 
enormous, from the dissolving night. 

“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson. 

‘““'That’s an advertisement,’ Michaelis assured him. 
Something made him turn away from the window 
and look back into the room. But Wilson stood 
there a long time, his face close to the window pane, 
nodding into the twilight. 


By six o’clock Michaelis was worn out, and grate- 
ful for the sound of a car stopping outside. It was 
one of the watchers of the night before who had 
promised to come back, so he cooked breakfast for 
three, which he and the other man ate together. 
Wilson was quieter now, and Michaelis went home 
to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and hur- 
ried back to the garage, Wilson was gone. 

His movements—he was on foot all the time— 
were afterward traced to Port Roosevelt and then 
to Gad’s Hill, where he bought a sandwich that he 
didn’t eat, and a cup of coffee. He must have been 


THE GREAT GATSBY 193 


tired and walking slowly, for he didn’t reach Gad’s 
Hill until noon. Thus far there was no difficulty in 
accounting for his time—there were boys who had 
seen a man ‘‘acting sort of crazy,” and motorists at 
whom he stared oddly from the side of the road. 
Then for three hours he disappeared from view. 
The police, on the strength of what he said to 
Michaelis, that he “had a way of finding out,” 
supposed that he spent that time going from gar- 
age to garage thereabout, inquiring for a yellow 
car. On the other hand, no garage man who had 
seen him ever came forward, and perhaps he had 
an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted 
to know. By half-past two he was in West Egg, 
where he asked some one the way to Gatsby’s house. 
So by that time he knew Gatsby’s name. 


At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit 
and left word with the butler that if any one phoned 
word was to be brought to him at the pool. He 
stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that 
had amused his guests during the summer, and the 
chauffeur helped him pump it up. Then he gave in- 
structions that the open car wasn’t to be taken out 
under any circumstances—and this was strange, be- 
cause the front right fender needed repair. 

Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for 
the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little, 
and the chauffeur asked him if he needed help, but 


194 THE GREAT GATSBY 


he shook his head and in a moment disappeared 
among the yellowing trees. 

No telephone message arrived, but the butler 
went without his sleep and waited for it until four 
o’clock—until long after there was any one to give 
it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself 
didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no 
longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that 
he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price 
for living too long with a single dream. He must 
have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through fright- 
ening leaves and shivered as he found what a gro- 
tesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was 
upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, ma- 
terial without being real, where poor ghosts, breath- 
ing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about... 
like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him 
through the amorphous trees. 

The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfshiem’s proté- 
gés—heard the shots—afterward he could only say 
that he hadn’t thought anything much about them. 
I drove from the station directly to Gatsby’s house 
and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was 
the first thing that alarmed any one. But they knew 
then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a word said, 
four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I, 
hurried down to the pool. 

There was a faint, barely perceptible movement 
of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged 


THE GREAT GATSBY 95 


its way toward the drain at the other. With little 
ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the 
Jaden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. 
A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the 
surface was enough to disturb its accidental course 
with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster 
of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of 
transit, a thin red circle in the water. 

It was after we started with Gatsby toward the 
house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little 
way off in the grass, and the holocaust was com- 
plete. 


CHAPTER IX 


AFTER two years I remember the rest of that day, 
and that night and the next day, only as an endless 
drill of police and photographers and newspaper 
men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. A rope 
stretched across the main gate and a policeman by 
it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discov- 
ered that they could enter through my yard, and 
there were always a few of them clustered open- 
mouthed about the pool. Some one with a positive 
manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression 
‘““madman”’ as he bent over Wilson’s body that 
afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his 
voice set the key for the newspaper reports next 
morning. 

Most of those reports were a nightmare—gro- 
tesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When 
Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought to light 
Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole 
tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade 
—but Catherine, who might have said anything, 
didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount 
of character about it too—looked at the coroner with 
determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, 
and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, 
that her sister was completely happy with her hus- 

196 


THE GREAT GATSBY 197 


band, that her sister had been into no mischief 
whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into 
her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more 
than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a 
man “deranged by grief”? in order that the case 
might remain in its simplest form. And it rested 
there. 

But all this part of it seemed remote and unessen- 
tial. I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone. 
From the moment I telephoned news of the catas- 
trophe to West Egg village, every surmise about 
him, and every practical question, was referred to 
me. At first I was surprised and confused; then, as 
he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or 
speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was 
responsible, because no one else was interested— 
interested, I mean, with that intense personal in- 
terest to which every one has some vague right at 
the end. 

I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, 
called her instinctively and without hesitation. But 
she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, 
and taken baggage with them. 

“Left no address ?”’ 

c¢ No.”’ 

“‘Say when they’d be back?” 

é¢ No.”’ 

‘Any idea where they are? How I could reach 
them?” 


198 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“T don’t know. Can’t say.” 

I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to 
go into the room where he lay and reassure him: 
“Tl get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don’t worry. 
Just trust me and I’ll get somebody for you——” 

Meyer Wolfshiem’s name wasn’t in the phone 
book. The butler gave me his office address on 
Broadway, and I called Information, but by the 
time I had the number it was long after five, and 
no one answered the phone. 

“Will you ring again?” 

‘“‘T’ve rung them three times.” 

“It’s very important.” 

“Sorry. I’m afraid no one’s there.” 

I went back to the drawing-room and thought for 
an instant that they were chance visitors, all these 
official people who suddenly filled it. But, though 
they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with 
shocked eyes, his protest continued in my brain: 

‘Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get some- 
body for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go 
through this alone.” 

Some one started to ask me questions, but I broke 
away and going up-stairs looked hastily through 
the unlocked parts of his desk—he’d never told me 
definitely that his parents were dead. But there 
was nothing—only the picture of Dan Cody, a token 
of forgotten violence, staring down from the wall. 

Next morning I sent the butler to New York with 


THE GREAT GATSBY 199 


a letter to Wolfshiem, which asked for information 
and urged him to come out on the next train. That 
request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was 
sure he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just 
as I was sure there’d be a wire from Daisy before 
noon—but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived; 
no one arrived except more police and photographers 
and newspaper men. When the butler brought back 
Wolfshiem’s answer I began to have a feeling of de- 
fiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and 
me against them all. 


Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most 
terrible shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that 
it is true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should 
make us all think. I cannot come down now as I am tied up 
in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in 
this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later 
let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I 
am when I hear about a thing like this and am completely 
knocked down and out. 

Yours truly 
MEYER WOLFSHIEM 


and then hasty addenda beneath: 


Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his 
family at all. 


When the phone rang that afternoon and Long 
Distance said Chicago was calling I thought this 


200 THE GREAT GATSBY 


would be Daisy at last. But the connection came 
through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away. 

“This is Slagle speaking . . .” 

““Yes?”? The name was unfamiliar. 

“Fell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wire?” 

“There haven’t been any wires.” 

“Young Parke’s in trouble,” he said rapidly. 
‘““They picked him up when he handed the bonds over 
the counter. They got a circular from New York 
giving *em the numbers just five minutes before. 
What d’you know about that, hey? You never can 
tell in these hick towns——” 

‘Hello!’ I interrupted breathlessly. ‘““Look here 
—this isn’t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead.” 

There was a long silence on the other end of the 
wire, followed by an exclamation . . . then a quick 
squawk as the connection was broken. 


I think it was on the third day that a telegram 
signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minne- 
sota. It said only that the sender was leaving im- 
mediately and to postpone the funeral until he came. 

It was Gatsby’s father, a solemn old man, very 
helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap 
ulster against the warm September day. His eyes 
leaked continuously with excitement, and when I 
took the bag and umbrella from his hands he began 
to pull so incessantly at his sparse gray beard that 
I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on 


THE GREAT GATSBY 201 


the point of collapse, so I took him into the music 
room and made him sit down while I sent for some- 
thing to eat. But he wouldn’t eat, and the glass of 
milk spilled from his trembling hand. 

“TI saw it in the Chicago newspaper,” he said. 
“It was all in the Chicago newspaper. I started 
right away.” 

**T didn’t know how to reach you.” 

His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about 
the room. 

“It was a madman,” he said. ‘‘He must have 
been mad.” 

““Wouldn’t you like some coffee?” I urged him. 

“TI don’t want anything. I’m all right now, 
Mr 9) 

“Carraway.” 

“Well, I’m all right now. Where have they got 
Jimmy ?” 

I took him into the drawing-room, where his son 
lay, and left him there. Some little boys had come 
up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when 
I told them who had arrived, they went reluctantly 
away. 

After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and 
came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, 
his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He 
had reached an age where death no longer has the 
quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked 
around him now for the first time and saw the 





202 THE GREAT GATSBY 


height and splendor of the hall and the great rooms 
opening out from it into other rooms, his grief be- 
gan to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to 
a bedroom up-stairs; while he took off his coat and 
vest I told him that all arrangements had been de- 
ferred until he came. 

“*T didn’t know what you’d want, Mr. Gatsby’ 

“Gatz is my name.” 

‘Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take 
the body West.” 

He shook his head. 

‘Jimmy always liked it better down East. He 
rose up to his position in the East. Were you a 
friend of my boy’s, Mr. Gat 

“We were close friends.” 

‘“‘He had a big future before him, you know. He 
was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain 
power here.” 

He touched his head impressively, and I nodded. 

“‘Tf he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A 
man like James J. Hull. He’d of helped build up the 
country.” | 

“That’s true,” I said, uncomfortably. 

He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying 
to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly—was in- 
stantly asleep. ) 

That night an obviously frightened person called 
up, and demanded to know who I was before he 
would give his name. 





THE GREAT GATSBY 203 


“This is Mr. Carraway,” I said. 

“Oh!” He sounded relieved. “This is Klip- 
springer.” 

I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise an- 
other friend at Gatsby’s grave. I didn’t want it to 
be in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so 
I’d been calling up a few people myself. They were 
hard to find. 

“The funeral’s to-morrow,” I said. ‘‘ Three o’clock, 
here at the house. I wish you’d tell anybody who’d 
be interested.” 

“Oh, I will,” he broke out hastily. “Of course 
I’m not likely to see anybody, but if I do.” 

His tone made me suspicious. 

“Of course you'll be there yourself.” 

“Well, Pll certainly try. What I called up about 
is——__—”” 

“Wait a minute,’ I interrupted. “How about 
saying you'll come?” 

““Well, the fact is—the truth of the matter is that 
I’m staying with some people up here in Greenwich, 
and they rather expect me to be with them to- 
morrow. In fact, there’s a sort of picnic or some- 
thing. Of course Pll do my very best to get 
away.” 

I ejaculated an unrestrained “Huh!” and he 
must have heard me, for he went on nervously: 

“What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left 
there. I wonder if it’d be too much trouble to have 


204 THE GREAT GATSBY 


the butler send them on. You see, they’re tennis — 
shoes, and I’m sort of helpless without them. My 
address is care of B. F.——” 

I didn’t hear the rest of the name, because I hung 
up the receiver. 

After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby—one 
gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had 
got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, 
for he was one of those who used to sneer most bit- 
terly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby’s liquor, 
and I should have known better than to call him. 

The morning of the funeral I went up to New 
York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn’t seem to 
reach him any other way. The door that I pushed 
open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked 
“The Swastika Holding Company,” and at first there 
didn’t seem to be any one inside. But when Id 
shouted “hello” several times in vain, an argument 
broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely 
Jewess appeared at an interior door and scrutinized 
me with black hostile eyes. 

‘““Nobody’s in,” she said. “‘Mr. Wolfshiem’s gone 
to Chicago.” 

The first part of this was obviously untrue, for 
some one had begun to whistle ‘‘The Rosary,’ tune- 
lessly, inside. 

“Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.” 

“T can’t get him back from Chicago, can I?” 

At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfs- 


THE GREAT GATSBY 205 


hiem’s, called ‘‘Stella!” from the other side of the 
door. 

‘Leave your name on the desk,” she said quickly. 
“Vl give it to him when he gets back.” 

“But I know he’s there.” 

She took a step toward me and began to slide her 
hands indignantly up and down her hips. 

“You young men think you can force your way 
in here any time,” she scolded. ‘‘ We're getting sick 
in tired of it. When I say he’s in Chicago, he’s in 
Chicago.” 

I mentioned Gatsby. 

““Oh-h !” She looked at me over again. “ Will you 
just— What was your name?” 

She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfsheim 
stood solemnly in the doorway, holding out both 
hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a 
reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, 
and offered me a cigar. 

“My memory goes back to when first I met him,” 
he said. “‘A young major just out of the army and 
covered over with medals he got in the war. He was 
so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform 
because he couldn’t buy some regular clothes. First 
time I saw him was when he come into Winebren- 
ner’s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for 
a job. He hadn’t eat anything for a couple of days. 
‘Come on have some lunch with me,’ I sid. He ate 
more than four dollars’ worth of food in half an hour.”’ 


206 THE GREAT GATSBY 


“‘Did you start him in business?” I inquired. 

“Start him! I made him.” 

ce Oh.”’ 

“T raised him up out of nothing, right out of the 
gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, 
gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he 
was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I 
got him to join up in the American Legion and he 
used to stand high there. Right off he did some 
work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were 
so thick like that in everything’—he held up two 
bulbous fingers—“‘always together.” 

I wondered if this partnership had included the 
World’s Series transaction in 1919. 

““Now he’s dead,” I said after a moment. “‘ You 
were his closest friend, so I know you'll want to 
come to his funeral this afternoon.” 

“Vd like to come.” 

‘Well, come then.” 

The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as 
he shook his head his eyes filled with tears. 

“I can’t doit—I can’t get mixed up in it,” he 
said. 

““There’s nothing to get mixed up in. It’s all over 
now.” 

‘When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed 
up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a 
young man it was different—if a friend of mine died, 
no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You 


THE GREAT GATSBY 207 


may think that’s sentimental, but I mean it—to the 
bitter end.” 

I saw that for some reason of his own he was de- 
termined not to come, so I stood up. 

‘“‘Are you a college man?” he inquired suddenly. 

For a moment I thought he was going to suggest 
a ‘“‘gonnegtion,” but he only nodded and shook my 
hand. 

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man 
when he is alive and not after he is dead,” he sug- 
gested. “After that my own rule is to let everything 
alone.” 

When I left his office the sky had turned dark and 
I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing 
my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz 
walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His 
pride in his son and in his son’s possessions was con- 
tinually increasing and now he had something to 
show me. 

‘Jimmy sent me this picture.’”’ He took out his 
wallet with trembling fingers. “‘ Look there.” 

It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the 
corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out 
every detail to me eagerly. ‘‘ Look there!” and then 
sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it 
so often that I think it was more real to him now 
than the house itself. 

‘‘Jimmy sent it to me. I think it’s a very pretty 
picture. It shows up well.” 


208 _ THE GREAT GATSBY 


“Very well. Had you seen him lately?” 

“‘He come out to see me two years ago and bought 
me the house I live in now. Of course we was broke 
up when he run off from home, but I see now there 
was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in 
front of him. And ever since he made a success he 
was very generous with me.” 

He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held 
it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. 
Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his 
pocket a ragged old copy of a book called ‘‘Hop- 
along Cassidy.” 

“‘Look here, this is a book he had when he was a 
boy. It just shows you.” 

He opened it at the back cover and turned it 
around for me to see. On the last fly-leaf was printed 
the word SCHEDULE, and the date September 12, 
1906. And underneath: 


Risesfromt bed |sh.3)..4.4' aes Se 6.00 A.M 
Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling ........ 6.15-6.30  “ 
Study electricity, etic... vce Wt Reroat hake 
WOT de be ual go wpe cein se oe te 8.30-4.30 P. M. 
Baseball and sports..")....4 1. ye oe eee 4.30-5.00 ‘“ 
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00 “ 
Study needediinventionss%,.2).4 .. sees 7.0079.00 bis 


GENERAL RESOLVES 


No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable] 
No more smokeing or chewing. 


THE GREAT GATSBY 209 


Bath every other day 

Read one improving book or magazine per week 
Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week 

Be better to parents 


“‘T come across this book by accident,” said the old 
man. “It just shows you, don’t it?” 

“Tt just shows you.” 

‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had 
some resolves like this or something. Do you notice 
what he’s got about improving his mind? He was 
always great for that. He told me I et like a hog 
once, and I beat him for it.” 

He was reluctant to close the book, reading each 
item aloud and then looking eagerly at me. I think 
he rather expected me to copy down the list for my 
own use. 

A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived 
from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily 
out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s 
father. And as the time passed and the servants 
came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes 
began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain 
in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced 
several times at his watch, so I took him aside and 
asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t 
any use. Nobody came. 


About five o’clock our procession of three cars 
reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle 


210 THE GREAT GATSBY 


beside the gate—first a motor hearse, horribly black 
and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in 
the limousine, and a little later four or five servants 
and the postman from West Egg, in Gatsby’s station 
wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the 
gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the 
sound of some one splashing after us over the soggy 
ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl- 
eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gats- 
by’s books in the library one night three months 
before. 

I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how 
he knew about the funeral, or even his name. The 
rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took 
them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas 
unrolled from Gatsby’s grave. 

I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, 
but he was already too far away, and I could only 
remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t 
sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard some one 
murmur “Blessed are the dead that the rain falls 
on,’ and then the owl-eyed man said ‘‘Amen to 
that,” in a brave voice. 

We straggled down quickly through the rain to 
the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate. 

“T couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked. 

“Neither could anybody else.”’ 

‘Go on!” He started. ““Why, my God! they used 
to go there by the hundreds.” 


THE GREAT GATSBY 211 


He took off his glasses and wiped them again, 
outside and in. 
‘The poor son-of-a-bitch,”’ he said. 


One of my most vivid memories is of coming back 
West from prep school and later from college at 
Christmas time. Those who went farther than 
Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Street 
station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a 
few Chicago friends, already caught up into their 
own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. 
I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from 
Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath 
and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight 
of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invita- 
tions: ‘‘Are you going to the Ordways’? the Her- 
seys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets 
clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the 
murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. 
Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on 
the tracks beside the gate. 

When we pulled out into the winter night and the 
real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us 
and twinkle against the windows, and the dim 
lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp 
wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in 
deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner 
through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of 


212 ‘THE GREAT GATSBY 


our identity with this country for one strange hour, 
before we melted indistinguishably into it again. 

That’s my Middle West—not the wheat or the 
prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling 
returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps 
and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows 
of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the 
snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the 
feel of those long winters, a little complacent from 
growing up in the Carraway house in a city where 
dwellings are still called through decades by a 
family’s name. I see now that this has been a story 
of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and 
Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we 
possessed some deficiency in common which made 
us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. 

Even when the East excited me most, even when 
I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the 
bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, 
with their interminable inquisitions which spared 
only the children and the very old—even then it 
had always for me a quality of distortion. West 
Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic 
dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a 
hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, 
crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a 
lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn 
men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk 
with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in 


THE GREAT GATSBY 213 


a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles 
over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely 
the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But 
no one knows the woman’s name, and no one 
cares. 

After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for 
me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of 
correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves 
was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry 
stiff on the line I decided to come back home. 

There was one thing to be done before I left, an 
awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps had better 
have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things 
in order and not just trust that obliging and in- 
different sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan 
Baker and talked over and around what had hap- 
pened to us together, and what had happened after- 
ward to me, and she lay perfectly still, listening, in 
a big chair. 

She was dressed to play golf, and I remember 
thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin 
raised a little jauntily, her hair the color of an 
autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the 
fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished 
she told me without comment that she was en- 
gaged to another man. I doubted that, though there 
were several she could have married at a nod of her 
head, but I pretended to be surprised. For just a 
minute I wondered if I wasn’t making a mistake, 


214 THE GREAT GATSBY 


then I thought it all over again quickly and got up 
to say good-by. 

“‘Nevertheless you did throw me over,” said Jor- 
dan suddenly. ‘‘ You threw me over on the telephone. 
I don’t give a damn about you now, but it was a 
new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for 
a while.” 

We shook hands. 

“Oh, and do you remember”—she added—‘‘a 
conversation we had once about driving a car?” 

‘““Why—not exactly.” 

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she 
met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad 
driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to 
make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather 
an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was 
your secret pride.”’ 

“Tm thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie 
to myself and call it honor.” 

She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with 
her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. 


One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Bu- 
chanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth 
Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a 
little from his body as if to fight off interference, 
his head moving sharply here and there, adapting 
itself to his restless eyes. Just as I slowed up to 
avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning 


THE GREAT GATSBY 215 


into the windows of a jewelry store. Suddenly he 
saw me and walked back, holding out his hand. 

‘““What’s the matter, Nick? Do you object to 
shaking hands with me?” 

“Yes. You know what I think of you.” 

‘You're crazy, Nick,” he said quickly. “Crazy 
as hell. I don’t know what’s the matter with you.” 

“Tom,” I inquired, ‘‘what did you say to Wilson 
that afternoon?” 

He stared at me without a word, and I knew I 
had guessed right about those missing hours. I 
started to turn away, but he took a step after me 
and grabbed my arm. 

“T told him the truth,” he said. ‘‘He came to the 
door while we were getting ready to leave, and when 
I sent down word that we weren’t in he tried to 
force his way up-stairs. He was crazy enough to 
kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car. 
His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every 
minute he was in the house—” He broke off de- 
fiantly. ‘What if I did tell him? That fellow had 
it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes 
just like he did in Daisy’s, but he was a tough one. 
He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and 
never even stopped his car.” 

There was nothing I could say, except the one un- 
utterable fact that it wasn’t true. 

‘* And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffer- 
ing—look here, when I went to give up that flat 


216 THE GREAT GATSBY 


and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there 
on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. 
By God it was awful i 

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that 
what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It 
was all very careless and confused. They were care- 
less people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up 
things and creatures and then retreated back into 
their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever 
it was that kept them together, and let other people 
clean up the mess they had made... . 

I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for 
I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. 
Then he went into the jewelry store to buy a 
pearl necklace—or perhaps only a pair of cuff but- 
tons—rid of my provincial squeamishness forever. 





Gatsby’s house was still empty when I left—the 
grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One 
of the taxi drivers in the village never took a fare 
past the entrance gate without stopping for a min- 
ute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove 
Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the 
accident, and perhaps he had made a story about 
it all his own. I didn’t want to hear it and I avoided 
him when I got off the train. 

Ispent my Saturday nights in New York because 
those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with 
me so vividly that I could still hear the music and 


THE GREAT GATSBY 24:7 


the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, 
and the cars going up and down his drive. One 
night I did hear a material car there, and saw its 
lights stop at his front steps. But I didn’t investi- 
gate. Probably it was some final guest who had 
been away at the ends of the earth and didn’t know 
that the party was over. 

On the last night, with my trunk packed and my 
car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at 
that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. 
On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by 
some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in 
the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe 
raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down 
to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. 

Most of the big shore places were closed now and 
there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, 
moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And 
as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began 
to melt away until gradually I became aware of 
the old island here that flowered once for Dutch 
sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. 
Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for 
Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to 
the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a 
transitory enchanted moment man must have held 
his breath in the presence of this continent, com- 
pelled into an esthetic contemplation he neither un- 
derstood nor desired, face to face for the last time 


218 THE GREAT GATSBY 


in history with something commensurate to his 
capacity for wonder. 

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown 
world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first 
picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. 
He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his 
dream must have seemed so close that he could 
hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it 
was already behind him, somewhere back in that 
vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark 
fields of the republic rolled on under the night. 

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic 
future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded 
us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will 
run faster, stretch out our arms farther. ... And 
one fine morning—— 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne 
back ceaselessly into the past. 














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